I was commenting upon Xaxnar’s piece on Elizabeth Warren and realized the comment was getting lengthy such that it probably should be its own piece. So here you go below. 1st though, to answer Xaxnar’s question regarding any support for Warren, I’ve donated to both Warren and Biden as I see them as the two standing who have demonstrated capacity for strategy. And I’ve already voted absentee for Warren to The Commonwealth of Virginia.
There are several ways Warren could show herself apart without attacking intra-party rivals. The Atlantic shows that while her ideals sound similar to Sanders, her grounding comes from a completely different place. Hers comes from the same place as Teddy Roosevelt.
Warren is an intellectual descendent of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who posed as both an enemy of economic concentration and a believer in competitive markets. Like Brandeis, Warren’s primary goal is to depose the monopolists and tame finance, so that a broader swath of the public can participate in the economy as owners and entrepreneurs. Earlier in the campaign, when she was bolder about distinguishing herself, she announced, “I’m capitalist to the bone.”
Further, Warren shows herself to be the thoughtful leader in this race. The others all are trying to be inspirational yet have no actual pathway forward. Ideals and vision are just wishes without plans and policy. Warren has shown the ability to do the nugging hard work required for strategy. Only Biden can claim likewise as he’s done it in the Obama administration. See Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy Bad Strategy:
Bad strategy flourishes because it floats above analysis, logic, and choice, held aloft by the hot hope that one can avoid dealing with these tricky fundamentals and the difficulties of mastering them. Not miscalculation, bad strategy is the active avoidance of the hard work of crafting a good strategy.
I realize some will try to call out Buttigieg favorably here but they’d be mistaken. He seems to think our involvement in Vietnam was a well intentioned mistake:
innocence is like a dumb leper that has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm?
Barbara Tuchman could set him straight. As could J. William Fulbright.
Pete further shows lack of strategic appreciation in comparing sewer maintenance with national security. Warren is one of only two candidates with strategic ability and the only progressive candidate with such. She can highlight this while demonstrating the lack of functionality of others’ mere vision statements thus differentiating herself without actually attacking the others. Inspiration is not leadership. Charisma is not leadership. Serious times require serious minds. From Rumelt’s book again,
Not everyone was drawn to this formulation. Peter Drucker, one of the foremost thinkers about management, said, “Effective leadership doesn’t depend on charisma. Dwight Eisenhower, George Marshall, and Harry Truman were singularly effective leaders, yet none possessed any more charisma than a dead mackerel.… Charisma does not by itself guarantee effectiveness as a leader.”
The key innovation in this growing stream has been the reduction of charismatic leadership to a formula. The general outline goes like this: the transformational leader (1) develops or has a vision, (2) inspires people to sacrifice (change) for the good of the organization, and (3) empowers people to accomplish the vision.
This conceptual scheme has been hugely popular with college-educated people who have to manage other college-educated people. It satisfies their sense that organizations should somehow be forced to change and improve while also satisfying their contradictory sense that it is awkward to tell other people what to do.
Strategy is the craft of figuring out which purposes are both worth pursuing and capable of being accomplished.
Warren is able to comfortably tell us what to do. Warren knows what needs to be done and what can be accomplished. The others don’t hit these marks.