Robert L. Terrell

The more I survey the cast of largely uninspired characters who inhabit perches at the peaks of the most important power centers in the United States, the more deeply I am concerned the nation’s fate. I am not asserting that too many of them are corrupt, venal or criminal, though it is quite obvious that many of them are such. Nor am I alleging that too many of them are insufficiently patriotic, heroic or dedicated to service, because many of them have exemplary records regarding such matters.

I am focusing on another set of characteristics required of leaders in complex and chaotic times. They include high intellect, broad experience, superb education, moral integrity and inspired vision. Most important, they are the bases on which effective leaders establish credibility, support and the momentum necessary for moving societies in ways conducive to their grand best interests.

Unfortunately, very few members of the current crop of leaders with national visibility and clout possess such “necessities” in appropriate quantity and balance to rise above the level of common, mediocre placeholders. It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to make this observation. And I wish I could reasonably come to a different conclusion. But the facts are impossible to avoid.

We have a massive leadership void at the top in this nation, one which is more or less common in government, industry, higher education, science, and dare I say it, religion. It appears that the entire old, ruling class is in collapse.

When we consider the sorry state of affairs in the Gulf of Mexico, the massive financial and personal ruin inflicted by the recent recession, the ominous fate faced by many educational institutions, and the nation’s continuing inability to place an economic floor under the floundering middle classes, it is clear that our situation is dire, if not precarious. When we add the entirely negative impact of simultaneously losing two wars, the magnitude of our predicament becomes even more ominously apparent.

Nonetheless, our leaders dither, fume and waste precious financial resources while lurching from one incoherent, haphazard fix to the next. I am frequently reminded, while watching them hold forth here and there, in immaculate suits under movie star haircuts about critically important global events about which they know little or nothing, of the wealthy, totally out of touch Mandarins who dithered similarly at the beginning of the past century while China collapsed into ruin…