Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

by Lee Iacocca

  Former President Bill Clinton once said, “I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world—and I like it here.”

  I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.

  THE BIGGEST C IS CRISIS

  Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It’s easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else’s kids off to war when you’ve never seen a battlefield yourself. It’s another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

  On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It’s all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn’t safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day—and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.

  That was George Bush’s moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he’d regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq—a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn’t listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, I don’t know what will.

  A HELL OF A MESS

  So here’s where we stand. We’re immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We’re running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We’re losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

  But when you look around, you’ve got to ask: “Where have all the leaders gone?” Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

  Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We’ve spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

  Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone’s hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn’t happen again. Now, that’s just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you’re going to do the next time.

  Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when “the Big Three” referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen—and more important, what are we going to do about it?

  Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

  I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn’t elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don’t you guys show some spine for a change?

  HAD ENOUGH?

  Hey, I’m not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I’m trying to light a fire. I’m speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I’ve had the privilege of living through some of America’s greatest moments. I’ve also experienced some of our worst crises—the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s this: You don’t get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it’s building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That’s the challenge I’m raising in this book. It’s a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It’s not too late, but it’s getting pretty close. So let’s shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let’s tell ’em all we’ve had enough.

  II

  People and priorities: It’s that simple

  In my forty-eight years in the auto industry, I probably made six hundred speeches about management. Since my retirement, I’ve made many more. And I’ve always said the same thing: “Here’s what management is about: Pick good people and set the right priorities.” For the most part my audiences thought they were getting their money’s worth. But sometimes I had to shake my head in disbelief. They’re paying me for that?

  The point is, there’s nothing magic about it. People and priorities. It’s that simple. This advice applies whether you’re running a company or a country. If you think about it, it holds true for every organization and institution.

  If we’re going to figure out how to fix what’s wrong with America, we should start with this tried-and-true formula. Because if the people are bad and the priorities are screwed up, nothing else works. Period.

  Here’s the thing I learned as a CEO. You succeed or fail based on your team. If you want to succeed, you’ve got to have a group of people that knows what they’re doing. Vince Lombardi was a friend of mine, and he used to tell me, “Teamwork is what makes the Green Bay Packers great. People who work together will win—period. And that applies to companies and governments.” But he also stressed that the raw material had to be there first. You had to start with the talent. And that brings me to our government. Don’t you think we have a right to know before we cast our vote for President who’s going to be on his team? We put all the focus on the top guy. But governing isn’t just a one-man show.

  I’d like you to think about this as we enter the presidential campaign season. Doesn’t it strike you as a little bit strange that we don’t demand that a presidential candidate introduce his team before we vote? Sure, we know the vice-presidential pick, but that’s all about politics. Look at Dick Cheney. Cheney was the guy George Bush brought in to be in charge of his vice-presidential selection committee. Cheney interviewed all the candidates, studied their strengths and weaknesses, and finally presented Bush with his verdict. I can imagine him saying something like, “Well, George, I’ve spent months interviewing people, and I’ve finally come up with the very best person for the job—it’s ME.”

  If we’ve learned nothing else from George Bush’s presidency, we’ve learned that it matters who is in the cabinet. It matters who the advisors are—the people who have the President’s ear. But have you noticed that when you ask a candidate to say anything whatsoever about possible appointments, you get some drivel about how it’s inappropriate or premature to name names before the election. I don’t get it. Why should it be such a secret?

  WE SHOULD HAVE BOX SCORES

  When I read the newspaper, I start with the front page, and then I go to the sports section. During the baseball season, for example, I look up the leaders in the American League and the leaders in the National League.
The box scores make it easy to see who the top players are. It’s all laid out: hits, runs, errors, and earned run averages.

  I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be great if we could do that for government? Presidential candidates could present their lineups for key posts, and we’d be able to evaluate which team had the strongest bullpen or the most home run hitters.

  We could use a similar process for picking our representatives. When election time comes, we could look at our senator or congressman and say, “Well, this guy has been averaging around .220 for the last three years. Let’s see if we can find a .300 hitter.”

  NAME THAT OFFICIAL

  I’ve been conducting an informal survey, and I haven’t met a single person who can name more than three members of the current cabinet without cheating and looking it up. This is supposed to be our national talent pool, and we don’t even know who they are. I’ll give you a hint. There are twenty of them, including the President’s chief of staff.

  But wait. What about the noncabinet members who have great influence? Shouldn’t we know those names, too? Every President has a shadow cabinet, and the current occupant is no different. So let’s look beyond the titles and look at who the candidate’s friends are. In George Bush’s administration, there is no person more influential than Karl Rove. Good old Boy Genius. When you’re talking about the people who really have the President’s ear, you have to put Rove at the top of the list, followed by Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and the woman I call “the Nanny,” Karen Hughes. Until November 2006, Donald Rumsfeld was on the list, too, but he was benched after the Republicans got creamed in the election. This is the real power circle in the administration. It is an extremely tight circle, built from common ideology and personal loyalty. When the White House adopts a bunker mentality, this is the gang that’s in the bunker.

  You might think it’s a diverse group. Two women, and one of them is black! But when it comes to diversity in action, race and gender take a backseat to ideas. In that respect, Bush’s group of advisors is remarkably narrow.

  CRONYISM LIVES

  If the CEO of a corporation chose his department heads based on the system of paybacks we often see in government, he’d be called on the carpet. I can imagine myself at Chrysler trying to explain to the board, “Yeah, I realize that Joe has never built a car, but he helped me get a sweet mortgage rate on my home.” You may chuckle, but do you realize how much of our government is run by cronies?

  When the future of our country is at stake, it’s not the time for paybacks. In fact, our Founding Fathers were so convinced that no President would ever stoop to such a thing that they didn’t even bother to prohibit it in the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton wrote that any President “would be both ashamed and afraid” to appoint cronies—or, in his words “obsequious instruments of his pleasure.” Better known as ass-kissers.

  One of the most important lessons I learned in business was that if all you’re getting from your team is a single point of view—usually your point of view—you’ve got to worry. You can get your own point of view for free.

  I always kept some contrarians around—people I could count on to be devil’s advocates. It kept me on my toes. For most of my career, I had a very talented car guy working for me named Harold Sperlich. Hal was an engineer and product planner, and he was also a genius. In the early 1960s, he played a big part in designing the first Ford Mustang. Hal wasn’t a quiet genius, however. He was argumentative and outspoken. For him the creative process was like hand-to-hand combat. Needless to say, Henry Ford II didn’t think Hal was properly deferential. He made me fire him a couple years before Henry fired me. Happily, Hal landed at Chrysler, and together we made things happen—first with the K-car, then with the minivan. I couldn’t afford to let my ego get in the way when it came to Hal. He was usually right.

  George Bush is notorious for appointing cronies to key positions—especially if they raised money for his campaigns, or are friends of people who raised money for his campaigns. He likes to make some of the appointments during recesses when he doesn’t have to get congressional approval. That’s a blatant misuse of presidential power.

  We all know about Michael Brown (“Brownie”), whom Bush appointed to be the director of FEMA. He was an old school buddy of the former FEMA director, and Bush just accepted him at face value. Before Brownie joined FEMA, he was the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association—whatever the hell that is—and he was forced out of the job. Maybe the pressure got to him.

  And God knows what compelled Bush to nominate his old Texas friend and legal advisor Harriet Meirs to the Supreme Court. He never fully explained his reasons, but he did say her religious faith was a factor. Yeah, she believed Bush was God.

  These are examples of cronyism at high levels. You can find them just about everywhere you look. As any businessperson knows, qualifications matter. You wouldn’t hire a dress designer to design your cars. You wouldn’t hand over the controls of your airplane to the guy who runs the bumper cars at the amusement park. This is just basic common sense. Bush’s administration is full of “Pioneers” and “Rangers”—people who raised a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand dollars respectively for his political campaigns. Sadly, in some cases, it’s their only qualification. (Maybe campaign finance reform isn’t such a bad idea, after all.)

  I have firsthand experience of the favors game. Yeah, I admit it. I campaigned for George Bush in 2000, even though I’d never met him. I’d known his father and mother for thirty years, and I figured he came from pretty good stock so he should be okay. (I didn’t repeat the mistake in 2004.) After Bush was elected, I got a call from his chief of staff, Andy Card. He wanted to offer me an ambassadorship. Now, ambassadorships are a prime example of the payback system. Mostly it’s a prestige assignment, and you get to be called Mr. (or Ms.) Ambassador for the rest of your life.

  Of course, some ambassadorships are more coveted than others. I told Andy Card that I might like being the ambassador to Italy. Boy, I thought, wouldn’t that be something? The son of Italian immigrants returning to his parents’ homeland as an American ambassador! I have to confess I liked the idea. Unfortunately, Italy was already taken, so I passed.

  Later, I was talking to Bob Dole about it. “I would have liked to be ambassador to Italy,” I told him.

  He laughed. “What would you want to do that for? Don’t you already have a house in Tuscany?” That was true. I enjoy spending a few weeks there every year during grape-crushing season.

  Dole explained, “If you were ambassador, your main job would be to entertain all the Texas Republican donors coming to Italy—and it would be mostly at your own expense, because those embassy budgets aren’t that big. Wouldn’t you rather entertain people of your own choice in Tuscany?”

  I guess he had a point. But the whole experience got me wondering about what would happen if we chose ambassadors for their ability to grease the wheels of international cooperation abroad, instead of their ability to grease the wheels of political fund-raising at home.

  The more people see government as an insider’s game, the more cynical they get about the ability of government to achieve the common good. I read a poll recently. It said that only 5 percent of mothers wanted their kids to grow up to be President. Five percent! That’s a shocking figure. Isn’t it supposed to be the American dream—that any kid can aspire to the highest office in the land? But political life is an unpopular choice these days. I think that’s because we’ve lost the connection between politics and public service.

  Over time the distaste with Washington has eroded our talent pool. So when you’re looking for competence, you’re not always getting the best people. And with the cost of running campaigns, we are in real danger of electing only the wealthy and connected. In some states, you need at least $60 million to run for the Senate, or no one takes you seriously. And they’re already predicting that the 2008 presidential election will have a billion-dollar price tag. You’ve got to ask your
self if that’s what you want. And if it’s not, vote for people who are committed to making a difference for the common good, not just for their own good.

  THE NATIONAL HOT LIST

  Having the right people in place will help you set the right priorities. And having the right priorities will help you choose the right people.

  You can’t run a company without having a business plan, so why do you think you can run a country by the seat of your pants? For my entire career, I always kept a hot list. I updated it every week. I always believed that you should be able to write down your top priorities on a single sheet of 81?2-by-11-inch paper. If you can’t state a priority in fifty words or less, you’re in trouble.

  Do we have a national hot list? Well, that’s kind of hard to say, because politicians tend to keep things pretty vague. But here’s something else I’d like to see in the next campaign. After we ask, “Who’s going to be on your team?” let’s ask the candidates to name their top three priorities.

  One, two, three. No waffling. Oh, and can we have it in writing, please?