What do we want from our leaders?

by Sheila Connolly

The other day I was driving somewhere and found myself wondering, “did Napoleon have anxiety attacks?” Don’t ask me why I was thinking of Napoleon—it’s not something I do often. But I asked myself, did he wake up in the middle of the night and ask himself, Am I doing the right thing?

Think about it. Here’s the man who wanted to take over most of the civilized world. But physically he was tiny: I once saw a uniform that had been his, in the chateau of Malmaison in France where he lived with his wife Josephine, and he was far shorter than I am, and slighter (although pudgy in his later years). One source I looked at said he was 5 feet 6½ inches tall. My daughter is taller than that. This man was an emperor and commanded armies. Don’t you ever wonder how he did that?

And what about all those other historical figures that we grew up hearing about (the condensed version, at least). Do you ever find yourself pondering, Was Julius Caesar allergic to grain? Was Joan of Arc afraid of spiders?

We don’t have answers to many thing like this because it clouds our cherished vision of these people as somehow larger than life, or more than merely mortal. They had power; people followed them, and sometimes died for them. How could they be flawed?

There was an interesting article in the Boston Globe recently, titled “The myth of the visionary leader,” by Leon Neyfakh, about whether the public figures who we admire—presidents and the like—are actually the best leaders. We think we want vision and charisma and boldness, which are obvious traits. According to a 1977 paper by Abraham Zaleznik, classically heroic leaders possess imagination and a tendency toward risk-taking. In other words, they are bigger and better than we are.

Charisma may not be a good tool for actually getting things done, although that doesn’t stop us from voting for charm and good looks. But what we really need is someone who can make things happen, who is flexible, who can make effective compromises—not the people who hog the limelight and are in the love with the sound of their own voices.

Curiously, two weeks later in the Globe there was another related article, this one by Joanna Weiss. She was addressing the fact that it was kind of hard to distinguish between the two Boston mayoral candidates, both decent people and accomplished politicians (and both men of Irish background). In order to separate themselves they fell back on their own life stories. Weiss included in her analysis the example of Abraham Lincoln, cited by historian Michael Vorenberg. When Lincoln ran for President in 1860, he perceived that what the people wanted was an independent, self-reliant, strong individual; someone who stood out from the other politicians, who were mainly elite urban lawyers. So Lincoln’s handlers polished up the story of the boy raised in a log cabin, splitting rails and reading by firelight—a story we still repeat in schools today. The reality was that Lincoln was, yes, a smart lawyer in a suit (and without a beard), but that wasn’t what the voters wanted. Lincoln tailored his public image and won.

 

Would you vote for this man?

 

Should we as voters feel cheated? Manipulated? Or are we totally jaded by the endless onslaught of political spin? What do we really want from our leaders, and what does it look like? (By the way, Boston will have a new Irish mayor. Now, which one was he…?)

 

 

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Coming November 22nd

 

The Measure of a Man (or Woman)

by Sheila Connolly

This past week I was at Bouchercon (along with Sandy and Jeri), where as a treat for all of us not from Cleveland the opening ceremonies were held at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  The organizers were kind enough to allow us time to wander around and explore the exhibits (there might have been a riot if they hadn't).  One person later commented that people from our group tended to go around alone, as if to revisit their own musical memories in private.

 

Why is it that we are fascinated by the clothes of public figures?  I realized as I walked through the exhibits that quite often we tend to make iconic people larger than they really are, and since we are unlikely ever to encounter them in person, it's easy to do.  That's why it can be a shock when you're confronted by evidence of the real thing, er, person.  Here are some things I learned, based on clothing alone:

--Elvis was much smaller than I thought

--John Lennon was larger than I thought

--Johnny Cash had really big feet

--Somebody there loves Stevie Nicks, because they had no fewer than five of her outfits on display (I already knew she was small—and she's been wearing platform boots forever)

But then I recalled that this is not the first time I came face to face with the clothing of the greats.  More than a decade ago, to lift my mother out of a funk after her mother's death, I took her and my young daughter to France.  My mother was a lifelong reader of historical fiction, usually involving royalty, so of course we visited as many chateaux as we could fit in, with a few medieval sites for me.

 

One of our stops was at Malmaison, a small chateau that once belonged to Joséphine de Beauharnais, wife of Napoléon Bonaparte (she apparently bought it without consulting him while he was off fighting somewhere), west of Paris.  It's a somewhat obscure museum—most of the local people we asked had no idea where to find it.  In any case, we succeeded.

 

In the museum they have a uniform worn by Napoléon—and it's tiny.  He was both short and slender, and it's hard to imagine such a diminutive person leading armies and building an empire.  It says much for his strength of will and personal magnetism.

 

On the same trip, we happened to wander into the cathedral of Sens, where Thomas Becket spent much of his time in exile, starting in 1164—and there on display are some of his very ordinary clothes.  (Can you imagine keeping clothing intact for nine hundred years? BTW--I made a small contribution toward the upkeep of the cathedral's collections!)  And he was not tiny, although not large (except perhaps by the standards of his day). They even had a pair of his shoes.

When you grow up steeped in the mythologies of history-altering public figures like Napoléon or Becket, you don't always realize that they were ordinary physical people.  It is intensely moving the be able to hold up your own hand next to such displays and to find a sense of human scale across the centuries.

 

Rock stars are our current royalty, and yet, the exhibits at the Hall of Fame prove that they aren't larger than life. I'm still not sure whether I'm happy or sad to know that, but I'll admit I feel just a little closer to them. Thank you, Bouchercon committee!