SOROS NOTE: He's coming.
By Jonathan Wright
WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Where have all the leaders gone? Politicians and business people are asking that question as they look for someone to save them from financial crisis or resolve intractable foreign conflicts.
The U.S. and Russian presidents, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, are obviously out of the running.
Clinton has his back against the wall as Congress begins scrutinizing evidence of possibly impeachable offenses in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Yeltsin, who led Russia from Marxism to democracy and a
free-market economy, has been widely discredited in the collapse of the Russian financial system.
Germany and Japan hardly present a rosier picture. Helmut Kohl, after 16 years as German chancellor, is expected to lose this month's elections. In Japan, successive prime ministers have failed to make the reforms that many economists deem essential to end years of stagnation.
Simultaneously, the challenges that require leadership seem to be mounting. Turmoil in Asian and Russian markets have started to lap the shores of the United States. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic may be taking advantage of the vacuum to advance their own agendas.
The New York Times described it as ''a perilous combination of Brobdingnagian challenges to international stability and Lilliputian authority among the leaders tackling them.''
Said an article in Canada's Financial Post: ''The world is beset by an epidemic of smaller-than-life leaders whose failings and inadequacies do not bode well for the future.''
U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, lamented a decline in standards in a Senate speech on Wednesday on the Clinton scandal.
''Where are the nation's leaders, to whom children can look up? Family values and religious values are looked on as old-fashioned, unsophisticated ... The nation is inexorably sinking towards the lowest common denominator,'' he said.
But political scientists in the United States do not share this gloom about the gravity of the crises or the paucity of potential leaders. If people cannot find the leaders, they probably don't need them, they add.
''It's an age-old complaint. I don't think there's anything new about it at all,'' said Richard Semiatin, assistant professor of government at American University in Washington.
''Leaders emerge in a war or perhaps a severe economic event such as a depression. Otherwise, even if people have leadership skills, they're missed by the times. You have a pool of people and at the time of crisis people hopefully emerge,'' he added.
''It's the right person being there at a propitious moment, and this is not one of those propitious moments. The type of situation doesn't lend itself to that,'' he said.
Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, agreed that strong leaders are invisible in normal times.
''A perfect example would be (U.S. president) Harry Truman, considered a hack politician put on the ticket for various reasons that had very little to do with his ability, who suddenly became president and is now recognized as a major architect of the post-World War Two world,'' he said.
''Leaders may rise to the occasion or we give them more powers and more support when we need them,'' he added.
Ronald Heifetz, a specialist on leadership at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, said: ''We frequently attribute our complex problems to problems of leadership when they have more to do with problems in our economic structures, in our cultural norms and habits.''
Heifetz, who directs a leadership education project at the university, said he saw plenty of examples of leadership, even from the politicians who are now under a cloud.
He pointed out that in almost six years in office, Clinton has helped bring peace to Bosnia and Northern Ireland. The president took the lead on reforming the U.S. health care system and failed only because he set too ambitious a target, he said.
Chancellor Kohl and other Europeans can claim credit for advancing the cause of European monetary and political union. ''It's a gigantic experiment and possibly an enormous leap forward for humankind as
people begin to redefine national identity,'' he said of their endeavors.
And nobody is talking about the discreet Chinese leadership, which, without much fanfare, has changed the face of the world's most populous country.
At least in domestic politics, democracy and instant communications may have eroded the significance of leaders.
But Heifetz says that on the international scene, they will remain significant as long as the nation state survives.
''National identity is a powerful force and the people who inhabit high positions of political authority have a key role in shaping the stories that we tell ourselves,'' he said.
''They help us explain who we are and the nature of the transition we are experiencing,'' he added. |
