http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/best-leaders/2009/10/23/david-gergen-the-national-deficitof-leadership.html

That the leadership deficit now seems so chronic suggests that the problem goes deeper than the quality of the individuals who come to power. There is something in the culture that makes leadership even tougher and more perilous than it should be. Why, asked Thomas Jefferson, did the American Revolution create a budding democracy while the French Revolution—coming at virtually the same time and with similar values—ended in tyranny? The answer, he thought, could be traced as much to the quality of the followers as to that of the leaders: American citizens were more accustomed than the French to responsible self-government.

The best point in the article, though he was quoting Thomas Jefferson (a “so called” founding father as Obama would put it). Burke came to a similar conclusion when studying the French Revolution. It is no secret that throughout this country’s history we have produced some incredible leaders who navigated us through the worst of storms. A responsible people produces responsible leadership, I can’t argue with this.

Our leaders today are discovering, with a vengeance, how much followers matter. When the economic bubble burst last year, a powerful, angry uprising swept the country and moved into Washington. Obama privately told bank CEOs, “My administration is the only thing that stands between you and the pitchforks.” Obama himself was the target of a second populist uprising that came in tea parties, town halls, and public marches. Hatred hung in the air, and some worried about violence.

Of course this is David Gergen I am reading so what was a decent read quickly deteriorates into the same old blithering. People were rightfully upset after the bank bailouts, but those who marched on AIG and other intitutions were astroturfed ACORN folk. Obama used them as a threat to get corporate America to bend to his will. Don’t blame the people on this one. The tea parties were peaceful and certainly tame compared to past protests dating back to the revolutionary era Gergen romanticizes, there was no threat of violence here. The town halls were again peaceful. Sure they got raucous but there was no threat of violence until left wing Acorn and SEIU thugs started to show up for counter protests. The people were not being listened to when it came to their worries on healthcare and the deficit, Washington was acting as if Obamacare was a done deal and the people, many in their 60s, practiced their constitutional right to expression and assembly. They were being responsible, not hateful or violent. The only people who worried about violence were the ignorant and the dishonest partisans who supported the President’s agenda. It was not hatred that hung in the air, it was frustration spawned by a lack of leadership. Nice job missing the point of your own article Gergen.

The president and his supporters have tended to blame the blogosphere and 24-hour news channels that feature extreme voices and manufacture artificial controversies. They have a point. There was a time in the lives of many today when the culture and the media environment were more civil and the country was more united. The 1940s, ’50s, and early ’60s had ugly moments—remember McCarthy? And Dallas?—but the overall tone was more positive. Was it any accident that those years also spawned Truman, Marshall, Eisenhower, and Kennedy?

Maybe I am wrong to jump to this conclusion but it sounds to me like Gergen is taking a shot at Glenn Beck. It’s all his fault. There are certainly extreme voices on the blogosphere but there are plenty of responsible ones as well. There are certainly extreme voices on cable but some of the most extreme reside at MSNBC and have the Presidents ear in secret meetings. Perhaps if the people felt they could trust the old media institutions to give them the truth instead of spinning, we might not have seen the rise of cable or the blogs. What does Gergin mean of “Manufactured controversies”? If he is talking of Beck he might as well call him out by name and state exactly what he is talking about. It is precisely this type of vague finger pointing which has lead to the people’s frustration.

Gergen complains how we are less civil than we were in the past. He sounds like a guy in his 30’s complaining to a teenager about how music in his day was so much better when it is today. Time naturally creates a sense of nostalgia but Gergen needs to clear his head. In complaining about protests and possible violence he forgets about the many riots and bloodshed that took place in his precious past before the 1950s. FDR relied on class warfare to redirect the frustration of the people and the many labor protests which took place in the same time. Woodrow Wilson passed the Alien and Sedition Act of 1918 which terrorized dissenters of his own administration. Before Kennedy we had three other Presidents assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley) and plenty of attempted assassinations as well (Jackson, Lincoln, Ted Roosevelt, FDR, Truman), we fought a Civil War which killed more Americans than any of our other wars and our own independence was founded after a bloody Revolution.

As for Civil discourse, are you kidding me? Lets go all the way back to Gergen’s Golden Age when Jefferson challenged Adams for the Presidency. This was one seriously dirty and personal campaign where at one time Jefferson called Adams a “hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman“. This is from one of our founding fathers to another! Even Michael Savage and Olbermann would blush at this.

We do seem to have a drought when it comes to true leadership in this country but it’s not because of the lack of civility or because of Glenn Beck on cable news. Try looking at our schools and their revisionist curriculums, the welfare state, the celebrity narcissism which is celebrated, the deterioration of Judeo-Christian values and the growing sense of entitlement and complacency in our population over self reliance and self determination. The less responsiblity we pass along to the government to take care of us, the less frustration we will feel towards them.

I saw no mention of Reagan in Gergen’s article. Reagan is easily one of the best Presidents we saw in the 20th century and he did it by cutting back on his own powers and giving more responsibility back to the people themselves. Reagan also put forth an incredibly positive tone which Gergin says is missing these days, so why did he leave out the fierce optimism of Reagan who took on the cynicism of the media and academia (a left wing cynicism which prevails to this day and which was ignored by Gergin).

Charlton Heston once stated that we are by nature a violent country, founded in violence, and he was correct. Perhaps this propensity for violence is also what has kept us free from tyranny and less likely to bow down to the demands of the state. Gergen baby, we ain’t seen nothing yet.