Our 'clueless leaders' are ruining us, Iacocca says

            Lee Iacocca, America’s last successful automobile CEO, can’t understand why everyone is not as furious as he is.  We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These times cry out for leadership, and “we've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff. We've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car,” Iacocca says in his new book Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

“But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, ‘Stay the course.’ Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!” he says.

At 83, Iacocca is not running for office or looking for another corporate job.  He says free speech is a patriotic duty, and he is tired of people saying it’s treason.  Bush flunks each of Iacocca’s “Nine C’s of Leadership”:

CURIOSITY.  A leader has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place.  Bush brags about never reading a newspaper.  The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care.

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, try something different. Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. Leadership is all about managing change, whether you're leading a company or a country. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School, Iacocca says.

A leader has to COMMUNICATE, and that starts with telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore, he says. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem.

CHARACTER means having the guts to do the right thing.  Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths. For what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

COURAGE is not swagger. Tough talk isn't courage. Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.  If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized.

CONVICTION is a fire in your belly, a passion to get something done. Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President, four hundred and counting. It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006, another record. But Congress found time to vote itself a raise.

CHARISMA is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire, not to be flashy.  Maybe Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue, but those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over well with world leaders, Iacocca says.

A leader has to be COMPETENT. You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. A leader has to be a problem solver, and energy, global warming, Social Security, health care all seem to be on the back burner.

George Bush doesn't have COMMON SENSE, Iacocca says, just a lot of sound bites. “They'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush.” I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while, Iacocca says.

Leadership is forged in times of CRISIS. On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. Bush hid for  a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero. That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed.

And when he'd regained his composure, he led us to Iraq, a road his own father considered disastrous. But Bush listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare you, I don't know what will.

"Where have all the leaders gone?" he asks.  Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense?  Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports? Name one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability. Everyone's hunkering down, hoping it doesn't happen again. Deal with it. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.  Our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of?

“I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire,” he says. “I believe in America. In my lifetime I've seen the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and  9/11. You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough, Iacocca says.