On Leadership

 
There is an expectation all around the world that someone will come around and start making sense. We all thought that the man had arrived a year ago and perhaps it's still too early to judge the new American President but what is that would make real a leader in our times?

Media Play
We no longer really know someone anymore because the world is conducted in the 2-dimensional world of the electronic media. The economies managed by nation states are gigantic systems that rule over its every aspect. Services can only be provided if they can be funded and given the scale, massive budget allowances are the only ways in which people's needs can be met. Managing issues such as health and education at a large scale has meant homogenisation of procedures and content. At the summit of decision making, the leaders are hamstrung by legislative systems so influenced by powerful interest groups that good sense no longer prevails readily. So in this tangly context what would make an exemplary leader in our times is above all an extraordinary capacity to comprehend the actuality of all the converging realities. That is, how to bring the vested interest lobbies together; how to mediate the removal of suspicion and rancour between positions in conflict. In other words, the leader must find a common theme that will rehabilitate the political setting from its current state of formlessness into a purposeful entity.

With Words
Eloquence is at its most useful when giving orders. There is something to be done. In order to reform a system - structural changes, that is, physical changes - are necessary. Things must be made and moved. It's taken a full year for a President with a majority in both houses to push through an essential bill and its actual enactment is a long way off. We see no innovations in the occupation policies of Iraq and Afghanistan that would give those countries back to their own people. Why? because he is merely speaking with words, not acting with them. This is a useful lesson for all who would aspire to come after.

Wishing Well
"Cos I know what you are wishing for, love in a peaceful world." sang the rock band 'Free'. It is the common wish of our time and so because, at least in intent, we live with this sense of goodwill, we believe that the modern generation cannot possibly do any harm. A President that comes from the core of this generational change of attitude therefore has to watch it, in this climate of self-promoted complacence, that he doesn't get confused in the generalities of needless altruism. He must realise that in the balancing out of conflicts, for whom the mediation is for. Blessed though he may be, he must take sides. If inherited injustices are still prevalent in society, where he will find the need for favour, therefore the material for his themes is obvious. Every conductor knows that in harmonising, the affinities at the opposite ends of the scale are what must be energised.