The world and its leaders

Jeremy Seabrook
The Statesman, 14 October

It has often been observed that the contemporary world lacks leaders of stature and vision. Of the great statesmen of the last century, few remain. Perhaps Nelson Mandela is the sole survivor of a generation of freedom fighters, to whom the word “struggle” was familiar, and who remained humane and unembittered by the imprisonment and isolation imposed by the apartheid regime in South Africa.

It is not that the planet no longer requires women and men of vision. Quite the contrary. Whether we look at the so-called “war on terror”, growing inequality, the perilous condition of the biosphere, the rise of “non-state actors”, traffic in human beings, the increasing social violence that seems to come with economic success, it is clear that people with the ability to inspire others are desperately needed. Rarely has there been such a dearth of idealists and visionaries, when they are most urgently sought by a puzzled and wondering humanity.

If we pass in review some of those called upon to deliver us from the tensions and insecurities of this age, what we see, for the most part, is individuals whose abilities fall pitifully short of the purpose. Will anyone say that George W Bush has made the world safer during his tenure of the White House? Confronted by the enormity of 9/11, he declared that the struggle against Al-Qaida demanded a more subtle and measured response than a conventional war. He then not only killed thousands of innocent civilians in Afghanistan as a by-product of the removal of the Taliban, but also followed up this triumph with the ill-fated assault upon an Iraq which posed no threat to the USA in 2003. Iraq subsequently became a nursery for new forms of hatred and sectarianism, and the further alienation of the majority of Muslims from Bush’s visionless project for the world. And even in the shadow of this humanitarian disaster, he is actively preparing a strike against Iran, which, he believes, will “save” West Asia from the further consequences of his own tragic blunders in the region.

And where were the voices counseling caution and sagacity in presence of the grandiose folly of the puny white man in the big white house? Tony Blair, victim no doubt of the same imperial delusion which animated his political soulmate, settled for a share in the “glory” which should have come from the ousting of Saddam. And even a Europe which made faint noises of objection at the time of the invasion of Iraq, has subsequently mended its ways, electing the sycophantic Sarkozy and Germany’s own “iron lady”, Angela Merkel, whose principal desire is to propitiate the only superpower by bringing the benefits of its economic model to their own countries, including, of course, the pleasing fallout from the “sub-prime” mortgage scandal.

Looking further afield, we search in vain for an element of generosity or nobility in other leaders. Vladimir Putin has revitalised a Russia left prostrate after the shock therapy of capitalism, but he has done so with an authoritarian disregard for democracy, aided and abetted by a plentiful supply of the energy supplies, on which the economic wellbeing of neighbouring countries is dependent.

China, a potential counterbalance to the monoculture of the USA, cannot swiftly enough repeat the excesses of the early industrial revolution by poisoning its environment and spreading the diseases of pollution among its captive peoples, in earnest mimicry of the malign “developmentalism” which now dominates the entire planet.

India, too, has its technocratic elite, lauding its economic take-off, while at the same time presiding over the largest concentration of poor people in any country; such has been its outstanding wisdom that many poor farmers have preferred to take their own lives, rather than face the indebtedness that has arisen from their obedient response to the counsels of wealth and power.

Other countries have sought all kinds of messiahs and liberators: some military, like the egregious Musharraf, whose pompous and ruthless posing has brought him such unparalleled popularity; others have risen by dint of great riches, like Thaksin in Thailand, whose billions bought him public favour until he was toppled by a military coup; or the impresario Berlusconi in Italy, who bought a temporary success with his media fortune. More recently, Bangladesh has been “saved” from politicians by a techno-military administration which proposes to “restore” a democracy which has so far eluded that happy land. There are other “rescuers” at hand - the archaic and brutal junta in Myanmar, the populists of South America, the repressive regimes of Iran or Sudan, the occupation by US proxy Ethiopia of the wasteland that is Somalia, the unreconstructed dictators of Cameroon or the Congo.

There is no mystery in the shabby quality of today’s craven leadership. What would be the point in having humanitarians or idealists in charge? The purpose of governance of today’s world is not to inspire hope, not to work for human development, not to travail to bring about a better world. The highest duty of elites is simply the superintendence of a system already in place. Global capitalism has its own iron laws and inviolable rules, its own imperatives and necessities.

Today’s rulers are called upon to exercise a managerial role, to ensure the smooth working of processes which have already been set in train. They are mere functionaries. Why should anyone look to them for anything other than fulfilling their predetermined role in the unfolding of a future already foretold, and inscribed in the universal imagery of perpetual merchandising?

Of course there is never any shortage of people ready to assume responsibility, even for events over which they have little control, as long as this is accompanied by trappings of power - the military parades, the strident rallies, the wailing sirens of security escorts, the luxurious lifestyles, parades and receptions with their peers abroad and the intermittent adulation of crowds.

Globalisation gets the leaders it requires, and perhaps, deserves. It is their present dismal destiny to preside over as serene as possible a transfer of the wealth of the world from poor to rich in the name of free markets, one of the most curious properties of which is to enslave human beings. We should not look to them for emancipation, for hope, for deliverance. The future which they promise is a place already occupied by more of what we see now - more megacities and slums, more agrarian despair, more segregation of rich from poor, more injustice, more inequality and more unbearable pressure upon the resource-base of the earth, whose capacity to carry future generations has already been compromised by their sightless visions of a succession of infinite tomorrows exactly like today, only more so.

There are, of course, millions of idealists and visionaries everywhere; but they work in obscure places, their contributions are seldom recognised, their achievements often passed over in silence, their small successes uncelebrated. The business of the world and the world of business have become one; and the triumphal passage of this entity through time is now the supreme calling of those to whom the title of “leaders” is only a savage and hypocritical courtesy.

Political leadership is still a pretty closed field

Mark Lawson

The attitudes towards the personal failings of leaders may have changed but the kind of leader likely to emerge from the present scenario has not changed enough.

IF THINGS go the way the David Cameron (U.K.) and Barack Obama (U.S.) households are hoping, then, in around 2009, a U.S.-U.K. summit will take place between the first black President of the United States and the first British Prime Minister known to have smoked marijuana. Of course, this may not happen. It's possible that the Washington end of the negotiations would be handled by the nation's first woman leader (Hillary Clinton), first Mormon (Mitt Romney) or first double divorcee (Rudy Giuliani).

The moral of these fantasies is that definitions of electability seem to be changing. At the start of any campaign, the team sit down and calculate the candidate's "negatives". But the electoral cycles beginning in Britain and America tantalisingly feature serious contenders who represent races, religions, domestic arrangements or student ingestion that would until recently have been considered insurmountable obstacles to office.

This is an overdue development. Many politicians and political commentators hold the reassuring view that British and American electorates have a record of sensible decisions.

Leaving aside personal ideology and looking at the long sweep of history, some on the Left would accept that Labour was not fit to govern in the 1980s, while right-wingers might agree that Bob Dole and the former leader of the U.K. Conservative Party, William Hague, were not plausible national leaders when they sought the job.

Weak theory

The weakness in this theory of the knowing voter, though, is that electorates have only had the chance to pick from an alarmingly restricted list of possibilities: almost always featuring white male middle-aged Protestants who accepted the bankers' and the soldiers' definitions of the national interest.

The latter part of the equation won't change. Even if the two countries are governed later in this decade by people who have experienced menstruation, racism or marijuana, or have taken part in more weddings or fewer baptisms than the political norm, they will all have trimmed to the centre-right to get elected. Even so, it is cheering that some of the traditional negatives seem to be receding.

For years, the belief had been that only a divorcee with a long-distant and discreet first wife (such as Ronald Regan) was electable in America. But the state of a candidate's marriage faltered as a campaign issue in 1996, when the Republicans felt unable to speculate about the Clinton bedroom because their own man — Mr. Dole — had changed wives in dirty circumstances.

The problem for Ms. Clinton is that she is a candidate partnered by a former President who ranks among the world's most famous adulterers. This means that her opponents can endlessly invoke "issues" involving her "husband" without being accused of invading her privacy.

There's little way of knowing the extent to which race remains a factor in American politics because only voters wearing pointy white hoods are likely to answer pollsters honestly on this. Mr. Obama, though, will presumably have thought hard about two factors: that, only two elections back, Colin Powell declined to run partly because he feared a redneck nut with a gun; and that, in current polls, Ms. Clinton is more popular with African-American voters than he is.
There is a cruel equation, also observable in show business, that the more appealing black performers become to white folk, the more they risk alienating their own race.

Drugs, long the second biggest negative after sex on any chief of staff's fear list, are also clearly in flux as a trip-up risk. Mr. Cameron — who is already seeking to overcome the modern prejudice that a former pupil of the elite British private school, Eton, will never again be Prime Minister — will also, after this week's leaks from a forthcoming biography, be the first prime ministerial candidate to have admitted illegal drug use in his youth.

The volatility of the narcotics question in British politics is demonstrated by the fact that at least some of the papers publishing young Cameron's scandal were doing so not in order to damage him (as would certainly have been the case 10 years ago) but as part of a campaign to soften cannabis laws. As with the marriage question in U.S. politics, the decreasing danger of pot allegations to a candidate is largely a result of the domination of the electorate by baby boomers, a generation familiar with social spliffs and domestic splits.

Apart from the other distinctions he represents, Mr. Obama is also the first major American candidate to have admitted to smoking and inhaling drugs at college. Mr. Cameron publicly renounced cigarettes shortly after becoming leader of the Conservative Party, it really seems that cigarettes rather than drugs have become the significant negative today.

Remote possibility

Any progress, though, is highly relative. An openly gay President or Prime Minister remains an outlandish possibility. And the subtlety of these judgments is shown by the fact that for the Democrats to select Ms. Clinton would represent both a breakthrough and a barrier. She would please progressives by being the first ever female nominee, but would continue a sequence in which — in a huge, multicultural democracy — a ticket in every election for 28 years would have contained a member of at least one of two families: the Bushes or the Clintons.

The current range of American candidates, however, highlights the narrowness of the likely next British field. After the U.K. Conservative experiments with a woman candidate (Margaret Thatcher) and a Jewish one (Howard), the main-party card at any election contested in the near future would probably contain three white male Protestants: Gordon Brown (Labour), Mr. Cameron (Conservative), Ming Campbell (Liberal Democrat).

While Ms. Thatcher may have been an imperfect advertisement for varying the gender at the top, it must be regarded as depressing that, 17 years after her fall, there is almost no prospect of a British Prime Minister who departs from the demographic orthodoxies of all recent premiers. A U.K. equivalent of Mr. Obama is very hard to spot — David Lammy, perhaps, but he is nowhere near any leadership betting.

History suggests that the Cameron-Obama scenario that began this piece also remains a long shot, for electoral reasons far more brutal than the kind of cigarettes they smoked. But another double-Wasp male handshake — choose two from Mr. Brown, Mr. Cameron, Mr. McCain or Senator John Edwards — would be a reminder of how closed the arena of political leadership remains.

However much attitudes may have altered to a candidate's use of marijuana or tobacco, the kind of leader who is likely to emerge from the smoke-filled rooms of politics has not begun to change enough.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006