OPINION
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In 2011 my son and I were standing right next to the hapless, forlorn Australian cricket team as they wandered out onto the SCG to be thrashed by the Poms. An innings and 83 runs was the humiliating margin. Disillusioned with his heroes, yet reluctant to abandon them entirely, Tom yelled out: "Just do something."
That is a summary version of the prescriptions on leadership given often to Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, US Democratic Presidential candidates and our own government. The one leader who has recently departed with his reputation intact - sadly but bravely and in due time - was Sultan Qaboos of Oman.
He governed, safeguarded and modernised a state where citizens took pride in their leader, respected their traditions and culture, wore their national dress with honour and collaborated willingly in grand national projects throughout five decades. Other leaders might not have carried off wearing sandals and a woollen cap, with a dagger stuck in their waist sash, but Sultan Qaboos always did so with a certain insouciant grace.
Mind you, you can connect to people while wearing only sombre, dark shades or an open-necked shirt. During the summer we have compulsively watched two state premiers, each blessed with a daggy, retro name. Gladys and Dan have convinced us because they have listened. What they have said about the fires has been simple, plain and clear. What they have felt and how much they have cared has been quietly shared with the public.
Are there other tests in a crisis? Leaving aside Tony Abbott, who has indisputably learned firefighting skills, which other former prime minister would we want on the hose next to us while we were defending our home? Out of all 29 contenders, Ben Chifley alone would qualify. He would need to put out his pipe, an organic part of his persona but a bad look on a fireground. Chif could keep his hat and bring to bear his experience stoking and driving a train. John McEwen would know how to muster volunteers, while Malcolm Fraser might cast himself in a squatter managerial role. The 26 others might possibly make you a cup of tea or wash out your eyes, but Salvos would do those essential tasks more efficiently.
Other leaders might fumble trying to find points of connection. I remember asking one prime minister what the point and focus of a speech should be, only for him to rebuke me by insisting: "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"
Minders, too, can be too protective and defensive of their bosses' standing. A politician in Tehran told me once there were extant photographs of the Ayatollah Khomeini after return from exile, taking out afternoon tea to the terrace where his wife and daughter were sitting. The Iranian went on to suggest that, when those photographs were released publicly, showing the Ayatollah as a normal man with ordinary instincts, we would know that a sea change had occurred in Iran's thinking about its leaders and its values.
Holiday reading enables us to seek out other role models for leadership. Take this one, a person sometimes sunk in moods "too deep for common regardings" yet possessing "an infinity of firmest fortitude". His actions were animated by "an intense bigotry of purpose". This particular leader was prepared to fight on against all odds, ignoring any costs and risks, crippled but dogged, defying his own "inclement, howling old age".
If we adjusted the sex, that might well read like a description of Margaret Thatcher, who has, indeed, been one of the subjects of my mis-spent holiday hours. The "infinity of firmest fortitude", however, belongs to Captain Ahab, master of the "Pequod", the lethally obsessed whaling captain in Moby Dick.
Both Thatcher and Ahab are lessons in the untrammelled force of will. Both might well be characterised as eccentric, erratic and egocentric. That is the least you could say. Each was the only person who could do a repertoire of necessary tasks, who would pursue a goal to the bitter end without ever permitting any dissident colleague or dissenting opinion to sway them. My reading has therefore been of cautionary tales, stories about leaders who crash through on some vital issues but who cannot be let loose nor trusted ever to let go of an obsession.
Charles Moore's three-volume biography of Thatcher teaches one bedrock lesson on leadership. Your cabinet and your base will put up with bullying, pre-emptive decisions, intolerance of criticism, playing favourites and refusing to admit error if and only if you keep winning. You can survive with no interest in organisation or management, shying away from "strategy in any formal sense" and relying on paperwork as the main means of governing only while you win.
As a counterpoint to Ahab and Thatcher, I have been refreshing my acquaintance with Pierre Franey, once a cooking columnist for The New York Times. In vagrant weeks Franey would follow tired randoms into a supermarket, let them shop, then offer to come home to cook dinner from what they had in their shopping basket and on their shelves. Applied to politics, that would mean a leader assessing carefully what our assets were and what we together could build from them. She or he would help us improvise, making the most of what we had.
A humble, helpful approach like that might have worked in Cobargo.
- Mark Thomas is a Canberra-based writer.