Haltom's Nineteenth Law: The greater your ambition to lead, the less fit for leadership you are

When ambition overweens, fantasies and visions take the driver's seat and take the bus over a cliff by a very direct route.


Innumerable academics have asserted that anyone who wants to be chair should by that wanting be disqualified from being chair. They produce many examples of those who want to lead in the worst way and do. In my 19th law, I slightly reformulate their truism to make it truer and a bit more general. Haltom's Nineteenth applies to presidential campaigns and to clubs or college reunions as well as to head officers of departments, schools, programs, and other insignificant billets.


My law is simply stated: the greater your ambition to lead, the less fit for leadership your ambitions will usually make you. I suppose there are exceptions, but why mess up an apothegm with subtlety?

The problem is not people who want to lead. The problem is people who need to lead. When ambition is yoked to some other psychological drive(s), ambition secures the office that the other drives will misuse.

Beware Pseudo-Cincinnatus!

When others must beg someone to lead, that someone might be Cincinnatus, a leader who accepts leadership as delegated duty and unwelcome burden to be surrendered immediately when dangers pass. Historical Cincinnatus became a military dictator because panicked Roman senators believed it necessary. After he put down the Aequi, Cincinnatus put down the fasces and picked up his plow. A statue outside Cincinnati, Ohio tells us so. [Cincinnatus also opposed attempts to benefit plebeians at the expense of patricians, but I am certain that that played no part is his acceptability to patricians as dictator. Well, maybe a little bit. Military dictators who are also egalitarians make things so messy, don't they, Fidel? But perhaps I digress.]

Wherever seeming beats being -- Haltom's Eleventh Law applies, for example, to the United States but not necessarily to all human societies -- expect the myth of Cincinnatus to be ritualized into mystification and usurpation. Some would-be decider reveals his ambitions but hides his certainties in an effort to be offered some top spot. [Is it coincidence that the word "certainty" hides "cretin" within? Readers from Louisiana may want to note as well that "certainty" is an anagram for "cretin yat." Yat denotes a dialect in New Orleans and those who use it. But perhaps I digress.] He mystifies the credulous with his willingness to serve them and thereby enthralls them. In the name of fantasies with which he plied them during his accession, he discards traditions and restraints. Nothing must condition the triumph of the will, will popularized the more personalized it in fact is. If Pseudo-Cincinnatus spins his regime well, he may align allies and successors with his will via spoils, patronage, and sloganeering. Born, bought, or broken, followers and wanna-be successors love Big Brother and propose new prerogatives today for The Leader but tomorrow perhaps for themselves.

Of course, the dynamics need not be so dramatic or revolutionary. As Aaron [Albert Brooks] warns us in "Broadcast News,"

What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? ... He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing. He will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance just a tiny bit. ...

Aaron is correct: enthrallment is gradual far more often than revolutionary. A little self-governance lost this time; some consultation faked next time; slight amplification of slogans to dismiss objections based on standards, practices, precedents, and norms.

Through revolution or evolution, the Devil needs souls but cannot seize them. He must seduce them. Either way, the Devil comes disguised as Cincinnatus.

Beware Pseudo-Cincinnatus!

Once offered the top spot for which he has slobbered and schemed, putative Cincinnatus turns into some cheap knock-off of Howard Fast's Marcus Licinius Crassus [Laurence Olivier in Kubrick's Spartacus] of whom Sempronius Gracchus [Charles Laughton] says, "This republic of ours is something like a rich widow. Most Romans love her as their mother, but Crassus dreams of marrying the old girl to put it politely." [As far as I know, this is historically accurate: Marcus Licinius Crassus remains one of the richest men ever but died in pursuit of a triumph. But perhaps I digress.]

Gracchus is barely polite and hardly subtle but exactly right. Having played the reticent fellow whose leadership qualities have shown through and inspired a Senate frightened by Spartacus to bid him dictate, Crassus just happens to have his senatorial toga under his cloak and a plan to consummate his dictatorship under wraps. Crassus summons Senator Gracchus and informs him, "The enemies of the state are known; arrests are being made; the prisons begin to fill." Gracchus sees his prophetic characterization of Crassus fulfilled. Rome must "assume the position." Cincinnatus got back to his plow in under three weeks; Crassus seems determined to take his time and to enjoy his prerogatives. [In the movie, Gracchus notes, "Corpulence makes a man reasonable, pleasant, and phlegmatic. Have you noticed the nastiest of tyrants are invariably thin?" Here history and Howard Fast pun. In Latin, "crassus" means fat or heavy. But perhaps I digress.]

Crassus is an ambitious, wealthy schemer who waits for Rome to turn to him, then launches his deliberate reckoning with slaves, with plebeians, with the mob, with the Senate, and with just about everyone else who stands in the way of his triumph. Crassus is the model Pseudo-Cincinnatus. [Did I mention that Crassus's undoing is that tantalyzing triumph that he wants to cap off his career? Crassus has more money than Croesus but wants a monument and a parade and a laurel held over his head. That leads him to his demise. But perhaps I digress.]


Beware Pseudo-Cincinnati!


Crassus is the epitomic Pseudo-Cincinnatus not least because his drives and desires are readily discerned, or would be if senators were not so spooked and if the mob were not so credulous and impotent. Crassus longs for liaisons with Spartacus's wife and Spartacus's best friend -- paging Dr. Freud -- but needs to liaise with fame to match his capacious fortune. [Crassus's marriages and affairs resemble the HBO series "Big Love" or certain outlaw sects in Utah or cults in Texas. But perhaps I digress.]

Crassus' needs define and drive him according to Kubrick: "If there were no gods at all I'd still revere them. If there were no Rome, I'd dream of her." [If one has sufficient funds, delusions are doable, I suppose. But perhaps I digress.]

Like Crassus, other Pseudo-Cincinnati almost always chase fantasies that doom not only those dictating but those dictated to. Pseudo-Cincinnati have visions. They see things. They foresee their own triumphs and so undertake fiascoes that take them down. They dream of Romes built in some short term but take Rome by a short route to chaos. Like many fanatics, the further their mirages recede from their efforts, the more they dedicate themselves to throw new efforts and old followers at causes that were lost before the Pseudo-Cincinnati accessed authority. When they fail of those visions, "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!"

Of the Great Leader's necessity, failures betoken not the faulty vision or foolish schemes of an ersatz Cincinnatus but the deficient loyalty and halting perseverance of the followers, who do not deserve their Great Leader but are about to absorb punishment that their Great Leader believes they deserve for frustrating his fate. [This entry reminds me of certain madmen in authority in the world today, but I mustn't digress.]

Beware Pseudo-Cincinnati!

In sum, Haltom's 19th warns us that ambitious, energetic people who need to get their way and disregard decorum and decency to get their way should be contained and constrained. This is especially the case in academia, where very little good can be done and so very many students, staffers, and faculty may be harmed before the tinniest pots "fulfill" their delusional destinies.

What might be done? What should you do? Simulate collegial courtesy. Invent effete but therapeutic tasks for which the power-mad are well-suited. Let them seem to be in charge of something safe, like a Web site. Redirect their drives and desires into the world's most perfect bowling league.

But never let them take charge. All too often members of programs, departments, schools, colleges, and universities set out to find Cincinnatus but turn up not even Crassus but Captain Ahab or Captain Queeg.

If you would not hunt white whales or missing strawberries or weapons of mass destruction, beware Pseudo-Cincinnati!


Coming Soon -- Haltom's Twentieth Law: The less likely someone is to lift or move a possession, the heavier, more fragile, and more awkward the possession to be lifted or moved will be.

Haltom's Eighteenth Law -- Never mess with someone who has more free time than you do

In a war or contest, beware the enemy or competitor with abundant leisure and deficient sense.


I learned this formulation of common sense from a colleague at my first academic job. This colleague practiced what he preened. At any hint of resistance to his designs or demands, he would escalate unconscionably. He thought himself an academic warrior. He would mass his forces to overwhelm an opponent who did not realize a battle was imminent. [That did make for a surprise attack because, as Richard Mulligan's psychotic General Custer might have stated in Little Big Man, "Nothing in this world is more surprising than the attack without reason!"] After the opponent capitulated to the bluster and psychopathology, my colleague would bray that the opponent should not have started a conflict with someone who had more free time.

The persons with the most free time tend to be those who invest in conflict time that they otherwise would spend on blogging, schmoozing, drinking, or other "social" leisure. This means that Haltom's 18th warns us not to clash with those who have little better to do than to strike poses, project outrage, protest umbrage, and otherwise play the blameless victim. While others may free up time by restricting their energies to essential tasks and by neglecting time-drains that are not very meaningful or rewarding, many layabouts have been clearing their schedules for years.

Even more dangerous is the loafer with something to disprove: his record of dissipation; the hard-earned disrespect of all or nearly all coworkers; his overweening arrogance based on no apparent talents or attainments; actual stigmata and imagined slights that sullied an otherwise spotty reputation. The truer the characterization that the wastrel wouold deny, the greater the wastrel's investment in reclaiming the good name he never enjoyed. Behold the notoriously unreliable chaps who bear any burden and meet every hardship to assure that those who see too clearly and who say what they have seen pay dearly for candor.

Please re-read my immediately previous entry [Haltom's 17th Law] to see how malignant narcissists scare up time to attack the enemies over whom they glory and to "demonstrate" their precarious self-worth. Since they define themselves by defiling others, these "people of the lie" are even more dangerous than loafers and layabouts. The latter losers badly need something similar to a victory and have ample time in which to post ersatz wins. The malignant narcissist craves triumph through conquest and subjugation and has little control over what he will do to crush the enemy.

Sarah Packard [Piper Laurie] saw the malignancy in Bert Gordon [George C. Scott] in Robert Rossen's The Hustler:

Sarah: And that way you are looking at me. Is that the way you look at a man you've just beaten? As if you've just taken his money and now you want his pride?

Gordon: All I want's the money.

Sarah: Sure, sure. Just the money. And the aristocratic pleasure of seeing him fall apart. You're a Roman, Bert. You have to win more.

So avoid the loafer and the layabout and others with ample free time. But most of all, avoid the malignant narcissist who will create free time for your destruction.

Coming soon -- Haltom's Nineteenth Law: The greater your ambition to lead, the less fit for leadership you are.

Haltom's Seventeenth Law -- Propagandists project crimes they are poised to commit

When accusers accuse, they often draw on their own misbehaviors past and planned.



I cannot quite recall the origin of Haltom's 16th Law, but I can pinpoint the source of Haltom's 17th -- Jacques Ellul's Propaganda [p. 58]: "The propagandist will not accuse the enemy of just any misdeed; he will accuse him of the very intention that he himself has and of trying to commit the very crime that he himself is about to commit."

Ellul here posits one of the enduring truths of society and politicking. Once one degrades an opponent into the enemy, one entitles oneself to use means that would be forbidden if one were competing with a worthy opponent within some rule-governed venue. At Guantánamo or in the Army-McCarthy hearings [M. Stanton Evans and Ann Coulter notwithstanding], the Marquis of Queensberry is/was not consulted. Those who believe that they would not win a fair contest heap onto the enemy the foulest intentions. One source of such intentions is one's own basest schemes and designs.

Suppose some malignant narcissists -- see The People of the Lie in the UPS Book Nook -- are jealous or resentful of a colleague. The narcissists are likely to accuse the colleague of flaws, schemes, and scams from the narcissists' own hearts. One narcissist foists his own foibles onto the colleague, dragging the colleague down to his level even as his accomplice transforms the absence of evidence for her charges into evidence of absence so that the enemy's innocence is made to seem evidence of cunning deceptions and false fronts. [Otherwise, the narcisists proclaim, the evidence would be clear to everyone and not just to the narcissists.] Opportunistic sociopaths, like other propagandists, project onto their enemies sins from their own pasts, sins that they may reprise in the near future, sins that avert attention from them and direct suspicion to despised others.

From this example we see that well-designed propaganda does double duties. Propaganda is a tool at once offensive and defensive. As offensive weapon, propaganda disparages intentions and imminent actions of enemies. As a defensive shield, propaganda preemptively blames enemies for what the propagandist argues he or she was compelled to do or may be compelled to do in self-defense. In adidtion to those offensive and defensive uses, propaganda works retrospectively as well as prospectively. It rationalizes the past even as it excuses the future, all in the service of getting past some present difficulty.

For instance, if a colleague quietly and privately informs me that I have violated a professional norm, I may strike back at the constructive critic with propaganda at once offensive and defensive, retrospective and prospective. On offense, I hunt down [in multiple senses of "down"] or make up accusations or suspicions and float them [like turds] among confidantes so that my confidantes may propagate smears and rumors without their being traced back to me. On defense, I bootstrap my offensive propaganda into defensive propaganda: my critic concocted false charges against me in a cynical, hypocritical effort to distract everyone from my critic's far greater sins and the true charges that the critic feared I might prefer against him. These tactics are retrospective in that widespread innuendo diminishes both the critic and the criticisms. ["Can you believe it? That toad called me ugly!"] but prospective in that publicized defamation undermines my critic-target-victim.

Hence, I might choose to make a critic's private criticisms public to pre-empt his or her doing so and to incline naifs to ask, "Would he admit the past if he were culpable? The original criticisms must have been unjust."

Ellul's insights go beyond accusations to attributions of intentions and spinning of interpretations, which more generally define [p. 57] " ... the real realm of the lie; it is exactly here that it cannot be detected. If one falsifies a fact, one may be confronted with unquestionable proof to the contrary. ... But no proof can be furnished where motivations or intentions are concerned or interpretation of a fact is involved."

Ellul does not underestimate the potency of false facts. When audiences consist largely of those distracted or ditzy or ignorant or indifferent, one need not engage in more sophisticated propaganda but may simply prolong or promulgate falsehoods. Supposed connections between el Qaida and 9-11, Barack Obama as a Muslim, and exposed urban legends make for low-cost but effective palaver into which accusations or other propaganda may be infused. The more credulous and conformist the throng, the more that flimsy fabrications and evidence-free suspicions will suffice.

Audiences deemed too sophisticated to succumb to bunk will be treated to interpretations and intentions. Malignant narcissists and other propagandists complement rumors, innuendo, and lies with half-truths and non-truths [e.g., statements of values that can be neither true nor false] and rely on the hubris of the sophisticates -- "I am too clever to be taken in by anything but the truth" -- to win over the mob. Once a target has been tarred as an enemy, factionalism do the rest: "Who are you with, the evil one or the forces of goodness?"

When next someone is projecting some image that he or she would like you to credit, ask yourself how open and clear the colleague seems. Colleagues who cite their sources or who direct attention to evidence or otherwise enable peers to test propositions are probably not spinning their own shortcomings into characterizations of others. Colleagues -- peers or superiors -- who invoke trust, civility, confidential information, or other devices to occlude usually have something to hide and some reason to avoid "the culture of evidence." Pay close attention to their charges, suspicions, and interpretations. They may be telling you what they have done and will again do.


Coming Soon --- Haltom's Eighteenth Law: Never mess with someone who has more free time than you do.