Lee Iacocca on Bush and the Neo-Cons: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Provided by John Estelle

This is a long excerpt from Lee Iacocca's book . Let's try to remember that Iacocca was Mr. Corporate America, not a lover of unions and chair of the committee that raised funds to refurbish the Statute of Liberty -- in other words, not a charter member of MoveOn.org.

Iacocca Speaks his Mind

By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney

 

Had Enough? Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's
happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody
murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right
over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't
even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car.

But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when
the politicians, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be
kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound
bite: Throw the bums out! You might think I'm getting senile, that I've
gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up.

I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States
is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead
us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by
passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The
most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in
handcuffs.

While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems
to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard
questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled
across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you? I'll go a step
further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is
a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years
old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to? As soon as I can pry
them away from their ipods for five seconds and get them to pay attention.

I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will
listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll
tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real.

I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote
because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey,
America, wake up. These guys work for us. Who Are These Guys, Anyway? Why
are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington?

Well, we voted for them? Or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what
we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree
to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and
tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a
dictatorship, not a democracy. And don't tell me it's all the fault of
right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy
argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a
nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals.
And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us
stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln?
What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There
was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up
and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?

The Test of a Leader

I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few
things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points, not ten
(I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the
"Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear,
obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how
the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to
be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to
the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen
the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to
choose wisely.

So, here's my C list:

CURIOSITY
A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the
"Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because
the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never
reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing
this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a
newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide
whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers
without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the
latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with
Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go. If a leader
never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows
stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's
right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you
think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006
election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the
polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he
should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was
on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up,
but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was
calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.

CREATIVE
A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something
different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on
never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control.
God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a
disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled
a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into
Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the
President, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army,
the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe
recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that
all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure
when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a
steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts."
Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't
good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as
we all know now, it wasn't. Leadership is all about managing change?
Whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and
you get to be creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they
covered that at Harvard Business School.

COMMUNICATE
A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth
or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the
truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk
straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince
us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it's
denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while.
Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful.
The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of
communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was
at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the
casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.

CHARACTER
A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference
between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham
Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power."
George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush
has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he
has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He
has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi
citizens) to their deaths? For what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge
his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his
daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are
questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of
character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

COURAGE
A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for
female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George
Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk
like a cowboy. You know, my gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the
twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a
commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk. If you're a
politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost
you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has
been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall
meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The
questions were all softballs.

CONVICTION
To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION, a fire in your belly. You've
got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How
do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for the
number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President, four hundred and
counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the
business of governing. He even told an interviewer that t the high point of
his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his
hand-stocked lake. It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in
session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the
record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing
Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and
had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote
itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.

CHARISMA
A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma
is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to
inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my
definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with
at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the
future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential.
Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go
over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a
G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she
was going to go right through the roof.

COMPETENT
A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to
know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround
yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being
our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see.
Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in
history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a
half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for
starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we
face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.

COMMON SENSE
You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie
Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car
business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East
Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a
huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee,
the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to
reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a
dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have
common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know?
Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-
Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush. Former President Bill Clinton once
said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to
get into the reality-based world, and I like it here." I think our current
President should visit the real world once in a while.

CRISIS
The Biggest C is Crisis. Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged
in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk
and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never
seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world
comes tumbling down. On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more
than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out
of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet
goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting
there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape.
You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route
back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the
panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the
White House. He basically went into hiding for the day, and he told Vice
President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in
front of our TV's scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell
us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a
couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground
Zero. That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And
what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to
Iraq. A road his own father had considered disastrous when he was
President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father.
He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't
scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.

A Hell of a Mess. So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war
with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest
deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge
to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health
care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent
energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The
middle class is being squeezed every which way.

These are times that cry out for leadership. But when you look around,
you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the
curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character,
courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for
alliteration, but I think you get the point. Name me a leader who has a
better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in
airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars
building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to
things that have already happened. Name me one leader who emerged from
the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day
evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for
the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm.
Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again.
Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure
out what you're going to do the next time. Name me an industry leader who
is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in
manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when
"the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen?
And more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the
debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem.
The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at
our country and milking the middle class dry. I have news for the gang in
Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and
remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is
being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some
bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't
you guys show some spine for a change? Had Enough?

Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to
light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America.
In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's
greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crisis? The Great
Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the
Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years
culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get
anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take
action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for
our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising
in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in
America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake
off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.
Excerpted from Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Copyright 2007 by Lee Iacocca. All rights reserved.