Proclaiming Joash King of Judea. Diploma Work given by Edward Bird, R.A., accepted 1815 (Joash was 7 years old)
I would like to speak up in defense of the term limits and not just for the President but for any executive office, small or large. There are two fundamental misconceptions:
- It matters a great deal who is the leader. In fact the importance of leadership is in inverse proportion to the size of an organization. The bigger is the organization, less it matters who is the commander, or more accurately, less it’s up to the power of the leader to change the course of events. A country or a large corporation is like weather. It’s influenced by so many unpredictable factors, only a short term assessment is possible. The leader of a large ecosystem can only hope to be successfully reactive. An extreme example is two dictators who had the absolute power – Stalin and Hitler. Why were they a mirror image of each other? The answer is that they where articulating the totalitarian absolutist culture of that time. This is despite the fact that they themselves thought they were the heroic trail blazers (no pun intended) and people attributed to them all the achievements and calamities. This is why I am so amazed at the passion and obsession directed to the corporate, political or religious leaders. You might ask if it doesn’t matter who is a leader, why do I advocate the term limits? To the second misconception.
- People tent to ignore the vast and vested political and corporate machine that grows around any leadership. This very group gets all the work done or prevents anything from getting done. This group of people grows calcified and fearful of change. They are at the top of their life achievement. Their entire power is derived from someone else. This makes them fearful, they feel not in control of their destinety. When people feel that they don’t have any control, the status maintance takes all the energy. The only way to dislodge this cast is to have a new leader. Therefore a new leadership is the only path to change, but it has nothing to do with the leader.
Image licensed courtesy of Picture Library of the Royal Academy of Arts