Our Infantile Search for Heroic Leaders

by Johann Hari
The Independent

Do you find yourself staring at the television and pining for a good leader — a person who will rise and make the world right again? Do you long for a Mandela, a Churchill, a Gandhi? Then grow up. Our political debate — what passes for it — increasingly focuses on a search for an elusive Messianic leader who will show us the way. This is the opposite of rational politics.

This search for leaders is based on a desire to return to childhood — to snuggle into the political cot and close our eyes, knowing daddy is outside watching over us. The highest compliment we pay to a politician is to call him “father of the nation”. I feel this urge too. It is difficult and disturbing to try to figure out what is wrong in the world, and how to put it right. How much more tempting to simply snuffle out somebody who you think is good and decent and kind, elect them, and assume they will sort it all out.

But this discourages us from doing the one thing that might actually solve these problems — figuring out solutions for ourselves then going out and campaigning to make them happen. Every civilising advance in history — from workers’ rights to women’s rights to gay rights — was won because ordinary people banded together and agitated for it. If we had waited for a good leader to hand it down from above, we would still be waiting today.

There is a bigger danger still. It is that, in finding a “good” leader, we then blindly follow them into dark and fetid places. Let’s look first at a leader whose ninetieth birthday we are celebrating this week: Nelson Mandela. Nobody needs to be reminded of his stunning heroism in the fight against apartheid. But because they were so awed by that, most South Africans followed him unquestioningly as he perpetuated economic apartheid - and worsened the most extreme economic inequality on earth.

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