Since I had to write this column before the election results are complete, I prefer to offer a book review. The book is by Gautam Mukunda, a professor in the Harvard Business School's Organizational Behavior Unit, and titled "Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter." It makes fascinating reading in the context of this election.
Mukunda, who analyzed hundreds of political, business and military leaders from throughout history, argues that they fall into two categories: unfiltered and filtered. Filtered leaders rise through the ranks and get thoroughly evaluated before they attain power. They tend to be capable but uninspired.
"Most organizations exist in a stable equilibrium," notes Mukunda. "They don't want to change. The easy, even the natural path for them is to just slowly carry on, often decaying gradually over time. So they tend to pick leaders who won't make any big mistakes — but that means picking ones who won't make any bold decisions."
Filtered leaders can be very successful — Thomas Jefferson, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were all filtered presidents — but this usually happens when they are flexible and strong enough to step outside long-held beliefs and seize great opportunities, as Jefferson did in making the Louisiana Purchase, or Reagan did by negotiating sweeping arms control frameworks with the Soviet Union and reversing course and raising some taxes when the budget required it.
The very best — and the very worst — leaders, though, tend to be unfiltered. They rise quickly or come from outside the system and have little track record. They haven't been evaluated, so the people who choose them can't know what they will do once in office. This group includes Abraham Lincoln, George W. Bush, Woodrow Wilson, Barack Obama and, possibly, Mitt Romney.
If Romney wins, notes Mukunda, he will assume the presidency with less experience in public office — one term as a governor — than any Republican ever, and less than anyone elected president except Woodrow Wilson and Grover Cleveland. Although Obama is somewhat more filtered after serving one term, Mukunda adds, we knew little about him in 2008, and he has told us little about where he intends to go in a second term. So, in effect, this election was still between two unfiltered leaders.
Which Romney would we get? The moderate who emerged in the debates and who governed Massachusetts? The conservative who ran in 2008? The even more conservative one we saw in the primaries?
"We don't know, and, as my book says, this is pretty much a guarantee that, if Romney wins, we will get a president who would do things that no one else would do, for better or worse," said Mukunda. "For example, Romney might move back toward his moderate roots and revitalize the GOP. But there's little in his record since he left the governorship that suggests he will do that. Electing Romney will be a leap into the unknown, and he has done everything possible to make it more difficult to know where we're going to land."
As for Obama, we know he can do the unpopular thing. His decision to press for a national health care plan against the advice of senior advisers is typical of leaders having a large impact, says Mukunda.
Nevertheless, he adds, "re-electing Obama is also a gamble. Obama has shown that he has the potential for greatness. His failing so far has been playing it safe; after health care reform he seems to have focused on making no mistakes that might cause his defeat, instead of generating triumphs that would guarantee his victory."
What we know for sure is this: We need a president who will make some big bets to move the country forward, rather than rewarding just enough of his special-interest groups to win re-election in a slowly atrophying system. In fact, we need leaders like that everywhere: to fix stagnant public schools; to create new industries and innovate in old ones; to develop the policies and technologies necessary to deal with climate change; to think and act anew in a transformed world.
As Franklin Roosevelt — another unfiltered president — said, "The country needs, and unless I mistake its temper, the country demands, bold, persistent experimentation."
We know we are going to get at least one leader with the potential for boldness, and thus for greatness. Let's hope we get many, and they use it for better and not for worse.
Thomas Friedman writes for The New York Times.