In 334 B.C., Alexander the Great took an army of 35,000 – roughly the size of the New York City Police Department -- against a Persian army of a quarter of a million in a bold quest to conquer the Persian Empire. Three years later, on the eve of the decisive battle at Gaugamela in what is now northern Iraq, he told his troops that they had no need for long, inspirational speeches. Their bravery and deeds made them more than prepared. But he wanted them to know that they had something the enemy did not. They had him. He would have their backs by leading from the front. They would endure together. And together, they would be victorious.
Why care about Alexander and the Greeks? For that matter, why care about history? Because they tell us something essential about leadership — that to be a leader you have to communicate a clear goal, demonstrate what’s in it for others and lead from the front. Whatever you may think — or not — about Alexander, he led from the front. He was a leader. And leadership is a quality that is in short supply these days.
Look around a world ravaged by the coronavirus. You have presidents who have manipulated and withheld information to save face (Xi Jinping), prime ministers who pretend to be Churchillian while sowing blustery confusion (Boris Johnson), strongmen who are openly indifferent to the sufferings of their people (Jair Bolsonaro), tough guys who disappear (Kim Jong-un) and those who shrink from the world stage (Vladimir Putin).
And then you have President Donald J. Trump, who announced he’s taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure against the coronavirus, which he doesn’t have, even though doctors have said it will do you no good as a prophylactic and may do you much harm in causing a heart arrhythmia. Does this make any sense? Or is it a smokescreen — you know, a is he really or isn’t he? — to distract from the American failure to “transition to greatness” and “meet the moment” — as Trump proclaimed we were doing? (Question: Is Trump’s “meet the moment” shades of California Gov. Gavin Newsome’s “own the moment”? Is Trump playing copycat with the governors, who have shown real leadership skills? Some have noted that he dropped the hydrozychloroquine bombshell after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo got tested for the virus at one of his press conferences.)
Yet, while the country tries to meet the moment at the grassroots level, Trump isn’t owning the moment. Rather the moment is owning him. Indeed, archrival Xi — who brings a chess set to his checkers matchups with Trump — is busy looking like lord bountiful, pledging to the World Health Organization $2 billion to help fight the virus that his country originated and then obfuscated. Sure, we give six times that. But whom did we send to the video conference call of the world’s nations? Not Trump but the B team in the person of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who didn’t remind the W.H.O.. what we were doing for the family of nations but instead attacked it and China.
Trump’s lack of leadership was thrown in sharp relief by former President Barack Obama’s wry comments to graduates, which can be summed up thusly: You’ll have to be the adults in the room, because the adults in charge certainly aren’t. There was a leader — calm, measured, charismatic. Trump, of course, can’t stand Obama because his excellence preys on Trump’s narcissistic insecurity. That insecurity and his fear of a failed reelection bid if the economy doesn’t rebound have him maniacally throwing everything at the walls and pressuring people to go back to work like some corporate Ebenezer Scrooge begrudging Bob Cratchit his meager Christmas dinner.
But people aren’t fools. They know that the dead make nothing, and they buy nothing. So until it’s safe, you can build it, but they won’t come.
Still, according to Trump, it’s time to down the hydroxychloroquine and blast off to work in “Operation Warped Speed.”
More like warped mind.