In uniform, I never got beyond Wolf, which is the next-to-bottom rank in the Cub Scouts. But many years later, I did study leadership at the Army War College, and from some smart faculty members from Northwestern and Penn and Harvard business schools, courtesy of the big media company I used to work for.
And here's one lesson that I got from those experts: Leaders need followers. And to inspire “followership,” as it’s called, leaders must exhibit some key traits — like common sense, integrity, transparency and reasoned judgment. And one more attribute that’s perhaps most crucial: Leaders need to actively listen to the people they lead, in no small part because that yields critical information on whether you’re headed in the right direction. Good leaders rarely need to use force — you know, that “Because I said so, that’s why!” — since that yields compliance only as long as the leader applies force.
I mention this because it’s becoming really clear that for all the attention leadership gets in the business world, it seems to be more a talking point than a developed skill in many areas of government. And maybe that’s one of the reasons that citizens don’t much trust their government anymore – and why some parts of government simply aren’t working very well.
Right now, we’re seeing the consequences of putting people into positions of authority who seem not to care about thoughtful leadership – namely, on the United States Supreme Court.
It’s too bad that the nine justices, who are appointed for life, didn’t get a few days at the Army War College, because there they might have learned to weigh their behavior against those key leadership traits – if, that is, they want the law they’re setting to be respected, and the court itself to be considered a legitimate arbiter of the law.
Consider, for example, integrity: Almost daily, it seems, there are new reports about ethical lapses by Supreme Court justices – including actions that might get judges kicked off lower courts, or that wouldn’t be allowed of other federal officials. And where’s the integrity of justices who insisted during their confirmation process that they would respect established law – and then proceeded to throw out decades of jurisprudence, like the Roe v. Wade decision?
On that point, consider this: For a quarter century, Americans have told pollsters by a roughly 2-to-1 margin that abortion should remain available to American women. So how does a court imagine it can maintain its legitimacy when it is so badly out of touch with citizens?
Of course, the court has no obligation to pay any attention to public opinion. Yet you would think that a court interested in compliance with its ruling would look beyond ideology and consider some facts about the real lives of Americans. Here’s one, for example: One in four American women will have an abortion, according to a 2017 study. You’re not going to block that kind of widespread behavior by a court ruling – or by state laws in Republican-led states outlawing abortion. Or a federal abortion ban, which most Republican presidential candidates support.
So we are about to see what happens when our government tries to enforce compliance with a view of the Constitution that offends a large majority of citizens. Actually, we have experience in this country of what happens when a loud minority imposes a rigid standard that doesn’t carry public respect. That describes Prohibition, a failed social experiment of a century ago.
Prohibition arose because of pressure from evangelical Christian groups, who claimed to speak for God. After a century of effort, the anti-alcohol band finally got the 18th Amendment ratified in 1920. It was an immediate disaster. Consider this analysis, by the businessman John D. Rockefeller Jr.: “Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened, and crime has increased to a level never seen before.”
It took 13 years for Prohibition to be repealed. Yet a CNN nationwide poll in 2014 found that 18 percent of Americans still “believe that drinking should be illegal.” That’s only about 10 points less than the minority who today want to ban abortion.
That’s who the Supreme Court is speaking for. That tiny minority is calling the shots in the states where abortion is being banned. That’s the group that is breeding disrespect for the law – and for the court – by imposing its will on the majority.
It’s not good for America’s system of laws for people to believe that the Supreme Court is just a tiny legislature, or another squadron in the Trump Reserve, run by the same sort of partisan ideologues who have risen to legislative power on waves of anger and distrust. Rigid ideology is antithetical to the reasoned judgment that we ought to expect of the Supreme Court, more than any other institution.
So the Supreme Court that gave us this policy disaster has nobody to blame but itself for the lack of respect it gets nowadays. It reminds me of another leadership skill that I was taught all those years ago, one that’s almost as important as listening: vision, in the sense of having insight into what will follow your actions. There’s clearly not an abundance of that on our nation’s top court just now, is there?
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.