I couldn't decide if this belonged in News, Current Events or Inanities but decided this was probably appropriate. I think more than a few of you will appreciate the thought processes of this man.

Absent leaders
OPINION
Phillip Adams
February 03, 2007

IN a world crying out for leaders who are neither fools nor frauds, cynical nor certifiable - to help deal with minor problems like poverty, AIDS, war and environmental catastrophe, including climate change - it seems timely to consider the profession of national leadership.
We don’t have one. A leader. Our PM’s a follower. He practises followship of George Bush, shock jocks or political polls. The US has a deluded ignoramus who’s been leading his nation into any valley of death on offer. And it’s not merely thin but anorexic pickings in Britain, France, Russia and Germany. Where some countries – Iraq, for example – don’t have leaders at all, others have them stick out from the crowd in uniforms crusted with self-awarded medals.

Irrespective of geography, history, economic model or political system, good leaders (using “good” to suggest competence rather than moral virtue, which clearly is asking too much) are as rare as rocking-horse manure or authenticated sightings of the Perfect Virgin.

“There are men who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry nations with them and lead the activity of the human race,” said author Ralph Waldo Emerson, sadly neglecting to give us their phone numbers. Winston Churchill at his best comes to mind, and certainly the man he scorned as “a half-naked fakir”, Mahatma Gandhi.

In US terms, you might grant greatness to a few of the founding fathers along with Abe Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt – and to the Gandhian Martin Luther King. South Africa was graced by Nelson Mandela and, if the Soviet Union had to be euthanised, best it be done by Mikhail Gorbachev.

When it comes to sympathetic attraction and carrying nations, John Curtin and Ben Chifley come to mind, with other local candidates far too contentious for inclusion here.

But there are very few current models, here or elsewhere. So why the shortage?

After all, many share the views of Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle, the former saying “I am the state” while the latter, gazing at his own reflection, said: “Men are of no importance. What counts is who commands.” While clearly in total and totalitarian agreement, Adolf Hitler went further and gave some explanation: “The efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of the attention of the people, and always in concentrating it on a single enemy.” In his case, the Jews, though others have found blacks, reds, asylum-seekers or Muslims quite effective. As Hitler pointed out: “If the Jews didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent them.”

Yet there are enemies galore that do exist, and don’t require humans hating humans. The aforementioned poverty, AIDS and climate change, for example. Sadly, they seem insufficiently galvanizing for leadership purposes. Instead, they create political paralysis.

Here, via a vox pop from various historical voices, is some more advice for would-be leaders, whether of democratic or demagogic persuasion:

Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others.
To be a leader of men one must turn one’s back on men.
Only he can command who has the courage and initiative to disobey.
If you command wisely you’ll be obeyed cheerfully.
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him the will and conviction to carry on.
The real leader has no need to lead; he is content to point the way.
A leader is a dealer in hope.
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
The leader must know, must know that he knows, and must be able to make it clear to those about him that he knows.
What a man dislikes in his superiors let him not display in his treatment of inferiors.
He who would govern others first should be the master of himself.
A degree of charlatanism is necessary in a leader.
Of the above, only the last item seems generally applied.

I had another suggestion in a recent column on Howard and climate change; on how his years of denial have, as a consequence of followship (in this case, of public opinion) produced at least a pretence of concern and activity – and a vote for nuclear power: “We need a leader more concerned with our survival than his own.”

Quite right, young Adams. Let that be another criterion for pre- or self-selection. Applied to most leaders, it would dramatically thin their ranks.

Perhaps we need some gene-splicing from illustrious DNA, a new generation of Jurassic pollies made up of snips of Lincoln, Chifley, FDR, Gandhi, Churchill, Mandela, Nehru. A double-helix of historical heroes for these difficult days. Instead of the current crop, who seem to have been spliced from the Seven Dwarfs or the Three Stooges.