What is Leadership? Who has it?

Leadership under pressure: Romney or McCain? Leadership is a compound of five related but distinct factors highlighted by Fred Greenstein — roughly equivalent to vision, character & personality, operational details, political skill and communication skill — the analysis of which I’ll oversimplify here as follows:

1. Can you create a persuasive vision and mobilize people behind it? Reagan excelled here. As did FDR. You can’t fake vision. You have to really have a sense of purpose and urgency, without which it’s hard to get people focused on a goal. Clinton’s presidency was a focused group meandering. I consider vision the one overarching indispensable.

2. Character & personality. You need to know who you are, and what you are about, and be consistent enough that your followers can trust your judgment in complicated moments. Are you comfortable in your own skin, and are others comfortable with you? Or are you ornery or stubborn in perverse ways? Or are you glib and slippery?

3. Can you troubleshoot the operational details, and do you have the attention span and organizational skill to see inside the machine where slippage is occurring and fix it? Many presidencies have been wrecked or nearly wrecked on these shoals. Think Watergate and Iran-Contra.

4. Do you have the political skill to make the right compromises and avoid the wrong ones, to assemble coalitions to make things happen? Purity doesn’t get anyone very far. Knowing how to cobble together a coalition by focusing on what you really need and trading the dispensable elements, or to stroke the right egos at the right time is indispensable. As is knowing how avoid making gratuitous enemies.

5. Do you have the communication skills to persuade the general public? Reagan had it. Bush II did not. The disaster of Bush II is largely a function of not being able to persuade his way out of a paper bag.

So, Romney vs. McCain:

1. Vision. Hard to say. I don’t really see a strong vision on either side. Romney is foremost a technocrat, and problem solver, a consultant. He can maximize profits. Can he guide a people? I’m not convinced. McCain will follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell. But beyond that? His vision beyond that mostly seems to be to get the approval of the New York Times Editorial board. In sum: Neither so far scores strongly here.

2. Character & personality: McCain was a brave and noble POW. And he has taxed that for mileage in his political career ever since. Beyond that, he is stubborn, feisty and prickly. He has a tendency to offend his friends and brown nose his enemies. He has a tendency to demonize and attack the motives of those who disagree with him. None of these quirks bode well. Romney seems free from these kind of disabling factors. He can get feisty, but not to excess, and he contains himself well when under attack. Romney’s chief liability is what I have called “plasticity and elasticity.” He comes off as inauthentic, partly through a somewhat stiff personality, and partly because he is far to conveniently malleable ideologically. So again, I give neither high marks on this front.

3. Operational details: Here Romney has to win hands down. I don’t think I have ever seen, in 30 years of watching, a candidate so clearly superior in this regard. He would not only handle it, he would thrive on it. McCain, as a lifelong senator, doesn’t give us as much of a track record on this front. He gets an incomplete grade here.

4. Political skill: If the definition of political skills is bipartisanship per se, McCain does well. If the definition includes a measure of how much you get out of a compromise, not simply your ability or willingness to make compromises, he does less well. Romney showed some strength on this front with his health care package in Mass, as well as balancing the budget there. But part of political skill is maintaining the loyalty of your own people. McCain’s effort to ram through the amnesty package last summer showed remarkable indifference to the priorities and sensibilities of others, and a disturbing willingness to demonize the Other. He created the kinds of scars that come back to haunt a president, or a candidate.

5. Communication Skill: Both men should be fine on this front. After the current president retires, we have no where to go but up. But communication involves more than facility with language and command of detail. It’s also communicating a sense of who you are and connecting with people on that basis. So communication runs into vision and character. On those fronts, both men bring distinct liabilities that will prevent either from being a Reagan.

Let me just say in summary, that I have a distinct sense of unnecessary tragedy about this election. Romney made compromises to run twice in Massachusetts which ought to have been unnecessary. I don’t know if he thought that the Reagan legacy was over, and that the William Weld model was the future of the Republican party. But looking back, it’s clear that he should have moved to Michigan, a friendly purple state where a Republican can viably run without pandering or ideological prostitution. Had he done so, he would have been ideologically solid AND would have been poised to lock down a huge swing state in November. Huckabee would never have emerged, and McCain’s resurgence would have been stifled. No mulligans here though. It is a shame.