THE POLITICAL MAUSOLEUM
The Second Wave leader, by contrast, dealt hi impersonal and increasingly abstract power. He had many more decisions to make on a far wider variety of matters, from manipulating toe media to managing the macro-economy. His decisions had to be implemented through a chain of organizations and agencies whose complex relationships to one another he understood and orchestrated. He hadto be literate and capable of abstract reasoning. Instead of a handful of barons, he had to play off a complex array of elites and sub-elites.Moreover, his authority—even if he were a totalitarian dictator—was atleast nominally constrained by constitution, legal precedent, party political requirements, and the force of mass opinion.
Given these contrasts, the “strongest” First Wave leader plunged into a Second Wave political framework would have appeared even more weak, confused, erratic, and inept than the “weakest” Second Wave leader.
Similarly today, as we race into a new stage of civilization, Roosevelt, Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer (or for that matter, Stalin)—the “strong” leaders of industrial societies-would be as out of place and inept as Mad King Ludwig in the White House. The search for seemingly decisive, jut-jawed, sharply opinionated leaders—whether Kennedys, Con-nallys, or Reagans, Chiracs or Thatchers—is an exercise in nostalgia, a search for a father- or mother-figure based on obsolete assumptions. For the “weakness” of today’s leaders is less a reflection of personal qualities than it is a consequence of the breakdown of the institutions on which their power depends.
In fact, their seeming “weakness” is the exact result of their increased “power.” Thus, as the Third Wave continues to transform society, raising it to a much higher level of diversity and complexity, all leaders become dependent on increasing numbers of people for help in making and implementing decisions. The more powerful the tools at a leader’s command—supersonic fighters, nuclear weapons, computers, telecommunications—the more, not less, dependent the leader becomes.
This is an unbreakable relationship because it reflects the rising complexity on which power today necessarily rests. This is why the American President can sit next to the nuclear push button, which gives him the power to pulverize the planet, and still feel as helpless as though there were “nobody at the other end” of his telephone line.Power and powerless-ness are opposite sides of the same semiconductor chip.
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