NOW IS A TIME FOR MUSCULAR LEADERSHIP!

Time for Muscular Leadership
The past is prologue to the future.

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© July 2006

ABSTRACT:

The remarks that follow are admittedly somewhat Machiavellian and centered around one man and his bold action oriented leadership, former President Andrew Jackson. He was a muscular leader. It was a requirement of his time and the natural essence of his disposition. He took on banking, the symbolic quintessence of the eastern establishment, from his relatively powerless frontier power base. He saw the bank’s monopolistic usury practices, and took action. He was an action figure, not a reaction apologist. In our day, this central bank determines interests rates while many believe it is the market. Interest rates in fact are determined by this misnamed private central bank, “The “Federal Reserve,” which in turn is owned by other commercial banks. Yet, we pay attention to its every action with bated breath, as does the stock market. Thomas Jefferson, who was more a man of words than of action, believed that bankers were a greater danger than a standing army and argued that if fractional reserve banking were allowed, within 200 years the people would be dispossessed of their own country. Knowing this, he did little to change it. Andrew Jackson, on the other hand, refused to renew the charter of the first central bank, a war he never totally won, but a war he wasn’t afraid to fight. He called a delegate of bankers who came to lobby him a “den of vipers and thieves.” A “time for muscular leadership” is not a hagiography of Jackson; neither is it about banking nor an endorsement of either party. It is about our drift away from muscular leadership. That said if you want to see a bunch of wimpish leadership, go no further than the United States House and Senate banking committees. No muscular leadership here! The sad fact is that wimpish leadership prevails across the land and in all our institutions and industries. I have deemed this elsewhere, as “leaderless leadership.” Such is the core leadership of our times, and thus the reason for these comments.



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Andrew Jackson was born before the Declaration of Independence (1776) was signed. He fought in the Revolutionary War, became an Indian fighter, lawyer, judge, congressman, senator, and general before becoming the seventh U.S. president – and all this without a formal education. He was the original self-made man and proud of it.

This colorful leader defied the modality of his times. His victory in the Battle of New Orleans (1815) saved the Mississippi basin and stifled expansionistic threats from Spain and Great Britain. Jackson rode his popularity to the presidency. As president, his frontier style of leadership resonated with people in the heartland.

Jackson’s leadership released pent-up energy and changed the course of American history. America on the frontier personified constant struggle. Even with all his follies, he never became stuck, but always forged ahead. Reality was his companion, survival his focus.

Critics point to Jackson’s flawed character, but he was also real. We seem to prefer flawless leaders who look good and behave as scripted. Jackson’s passion obliterated the frontier barrier of his age, and reinvented the presidency.

We are now confronting a new frontier—the Information Age. As Jackson personified the leadership of America’s emerging new frontier, the Information Age is looking for new leadership against declining expectations. This requires Jackson’s boldness, yet we are stuck in leaderless leadership. Polls drive the stake of denial further into our psyche.

Our addiction to numbers finds us “numbers addicts” hypnotized by institutional theories that create a false sense of control. Such a society resists a wake-up call in the surreal belief that no matter the calamity the resources will be there to dispatch it. Often only messy, atypical leadership can reverse this trance, as Jackson proved, making it clear why leadership matters.

Why Leadership Matters

The dominant themes of a time define leadership. They call for constant reinvention to match a changing world.

The Jackson Age was transitioning from an agrarian to an industrial society. We are now in the post-industrial age driven by the Internet, moving beyond capitalism in doing business, and into a wilderness we fail to understand. We are in a state of chaos with no one seemingly in charge.

We still need hierarchies that will unlikely follow capitalistic structures, or along lines of wealth and academic credentials. Influence will reside with those who provide information. Kids in garages are rewriting the codes by which we live. Institutions are lost in their own mazes unable to catch up because they are unable to catch on, while the government creates wars it can’t win, and responds to natural disasters it can’t manage.

Power will no longer reside with those who own the means of production, but will be in the hands of those who create and sustain attention. They will inherit the future. The old guard of institutions is atavistic, and institutional life is anachronistic.

Leadership is individualistic. Leaders sense they are special long before it is clear to those they plan to lead. Leaders are narcissistic with one eye on opportunity and the other on posterity. Leaders court posterity with the same enthusiasm as they court supporters. They use people like mirrors to reflect their own self-image.

There are no such things as humble leaders. The led wouldn’t be interested, as they are attracted to the reputedly infallible and powerful. Leaders display confidence, never second-guess themselves, court posterity by keeping records of their watch and time.

Leaders are seldom brilliant or creative, but decisive, and self-directed doers. This is not enough to make them stand alone as leaders. They must have a cause that resonates with the people, and lifts them out of their confusion. Leaders must first convince themselves they are special and gifted to lead.

Though leaders are often selfish and self-interested, they feign selflessness and other-directedness. It eases them through the barrier of suspicion. Even with this, there is no certainty they will succeed. Leaders must possess a singular ambition that fuels their desire to carry them to where they want to go. Ambition can be loud or quiet, but it is necessary because talent is never enough.

Leaders have clear responsibilities to the led, but the led have obvious responsibilities to the leadership. The led are quicker to criticize than to see their complicit role when things go awry. People get the leadership they deserve.

Leaders must realize people vote their hearts, not their heads. The Information Age and Internet has placed the nation on a global frontier where what was applicable no longer applies. The leadership that brought the country to this frontier will not suffice to carry it safely through it.

What made Jackson a popular president was his ability to relate to people. They were uncritical of his liberal language sprinkled with cuss words because his message was clear. It was directed to their self-interests. He was one of them, and he was on top—and they loved it because that meant they were on top, too.

Jackson was an impressive communicator not for what he said but how he said it. His vigor captured the moment, as he acted out his impulses as if thoughts were actions, knowing what nerves to touch. He was in your face without disguise or guile.

Nor was he given to reflection, but maintained sturdy principles that never steered him wrong. He was neither interested in the free exchange of ideas nor in improving his mind. The only law he respected was the law he made. He had no qualms about using questionable means if he felt the ends were justified. Nor did he have a concept of social justice because his justice only reaffirmed his own impulses and experience. He was confident he could handle any problem that might arise.

Brilliant men as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Aaron Burr, and John Calhoun constantly underestimated him. They painted him into corners, yet his counter moves would not only prove them the losers, but also make them look bad for the exercise. What they failed to understand is that along with all his self-deceit, he knew himself well enough to see it in others, and thus to beat them at their own game.

What Leaders Can Learn

What made Jackson popular was he made his triumphs their triumphs; his courage their courage; his heroics their heroics. Being able to touch people’s hearts, and therefore their lives, means more than a display of native intelligence. People believe what a person does is what they are.

It is how we perceive leaders symbolically that matters. We will follow our leaders to the death if they make us feel more than we are and stand for what we believe we should be. Such leaders create well-crafted personas that suggest invincibility, if not infallibility. Heroes remove the trauma of uncertainty.

Leaders cannot be packaged through institutional education, nor created by a well-honed network of friends. Leaders rise out of the muck of misadventures, percolating to the top of enterprise to see over our confusion. They often emerge as the answer to an imagined crisis, which is real in its consequences.

Leaders can know the pain that comes from struggle and deprivation and can see into people’s hearts and articulate their desires. Jackson’s father died as he was being born, his mother and two brothers died in the Revolutionary War, which found him an orphan without prospects at age 14. He had a deprived upbringing and education, and deprived of much chance to develop self-esteem. During his climb to prominence, America was also finding its own center, and climbing with him. So it is with all leaders who resonate with the people.

In adulthood, despite his many feats, his enemies ridiculed his inability to write a complete sentence without misspellings, and would cite evidence of an incurable ignorance. Yet, he changed the presidency, changed leadership as it was perceived, gave birth to a political party, and created an age of like-thinking presidents.

His intuitive vision allowed him to reach conclusions by shortcutting the problem while others were beating around the bush for the game. His strength translated intellect into character. He knew that people must first vent their frustrations before he could make connection. He was not a man of reflection, but a man of action.

The new Information frontier is less physically dangerous but more psychologically intimidating than Jackson’s frontier. Electronics are changing work, displacing millions of breadwinners from their traditional livelihood. Government has become high political theater where words are symbols that supplant action.

Words, however, are never the things they symbolize. More Americans are losing their jobs, suffering poor educations, and foregoing healthcare. Yet we wage wars that cost hundreds of billions of dollars that have no clear enemy, other than fear, and cannot be won. The money might better be spent elsewhere, but those in power always need an enemy to pursue. Companies announce having “great years” and then lay off thousands of employees. These things parallel to an amazing degree the time of Andrew Jackson when it became so clear why muscular leadership mattered.


Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr. is a former corporate executive of Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. and author of several books and articles in the genre of leadership. Check out his website: www.fisherofideas.com