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.