A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix

by Edwin H. Friedman

The subversion of democracy, I suggested, could come about not only from the abrogation of civil liberties but also from a failure of nerve among its leaders to stand up to uncompromising factions that wanted everyone else to adapt to them.

Supporting this atmosphere is the proliferation of revisionist history that focuses on the clay feet of yesterday’s heroes, from Columbus to Pasteur to Freud to Churchill. This “Monday morning quarterbacking” when the “game” is already over is both a symptom of the anti-leadership phenomenon and contributes to it, by focusing on pathology rather than on strength, and on unverifiable motivation rather than on the solid reality of deeds.

it is not necessary to have authoritarian dictators to destroy the integrity of a democratic society’s citizens. One only has to keep escalating the togetherness-promoting anxiety so that individuality is not only squelched, it becomes instinctively feared.