The world’s hunger for leadership has been growing for
years. There is no doubt that a charismatic new leader took the
world stage on November 4, 2008, with the election of Barack
Obama as president of the United States. On the night of his
victory, millions of Americans wept with pride in their country
and relief that he had triumphed over old prejudices. Watching
on television, children cheered in the Indonesian grade school
the president-elect had attended as a child. Brits raised pints in
countless pubs, and Kenyans danced with Obama’s relatives in
the village where his father was born. But Barack Obama’s
presidency is in its earliest days, and what we have now is the
hope that he will become one of the giants.
One result of Barack Obama’s extraordinary election is to
remind us of just how thin our leadership bench is. Most of
the leaders we once revered are gone. FDR, who challenged a
nation to rise above fear, is gone. Churchill, who demanded
and got blood, sweat, and tears, is gone. Schweitzer, who in-
spired mankind with a reverence for life from the jungles of
Lambaréné, is gone. Einstein, who gave us a sense of unity in
infinity, of cosmic harmony, is gone. Gandhi, the Kennedys,
Martin Luther King, Jr.—all were slain.
The stage is littered with flawed and disappointing leaders.
Ronald Reagan, the “Teflon president,” was stained by the
Iran-contra disaster and other scandals. Bill Clinton was
dogged by rumors of personal indiscretion even before he took
office and was impeached (and acquitted), the first elected U.S.
President to be censured in so spectacular a fashion.
Unlike the 2008 election, the 2000 presidential contest was
notable less for the contrast of the candidates than for the roller-
coaster ride of the process, which ended in George W. Bush
being declared the winner, in spite of his trailing Al Gore by a
On Becoming a Leader