12/19/2023 0 Comments European war![]() ![]() The Kansas Legislature is lousy with these types, and they get behind whatever half-baked and fear-mongering slogan finds the most traction on social media. What passes for leadership tends toward public displays of power, in which people who in other contexts would be called bullies are elected or promoted to positions of authority, and they throw their weight around while mouthing empty slogans about choice and freedom. But now the most effective leaders (if you measure effectiveness as influence) are grubby, empty-headed hucksters and would-be authoritarians. The goal is to shape leaders committed to the common good. Such rubrics are typically used in leadership workshops or self-help books aimed at shaping a particular type of leader: an entrepreneur, a civic leader, a teacher. It’s easy to find various theories of leadership online, from accidental leaders to adaptive ones, and each school has its own list of desired traits. Years of political division and pandemic have turned our conventional ideas of leadership inside out. Not long ago it would be difficult to imagine any American politician who expressed such views remaining politically viable for long, yet here we are. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, once a Kansas congressman, recently called Vladimir Putin a talented and savvy statesman, and Donald Trump routinely expresses admiration for leaders like Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Not the kind that praises dictators, certainly, or one that has a disturbing affection for strongmen in general. If we are lucky - and by that I mean smart and lucky - we will manage to avoid World War III. While still far away in a country that most Americans can’t identify on a map, this new European war will bring challenges yet unimagined. The Russian invasion, aimed at crushing a fledgling democracy, signals the end of the relative geopolitical stability we have known for a lifetime. The number of troops, estimated at up to 190,000, is about the number of Allied soldiers that hit the beaches at Normandy. Never have we needed effective leadership more than now, as we watch Russian tanks rumble into Ukraine, in the biggest military offensive since World War II. There’s a lot of talk these days about leadership, but damned little of the stuff to be found.
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