Former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacooca on the state of the nation. Lambastes the White House and also calls on the younger generation to doff their I-Pods for 5 seconds and show some outrage. This comes to us courtesy of Stephen Day.
Lee Iacocca Statement
By Lee Iacocca
Had Enough? Am I the only guy in this country
who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage?
We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless
bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got
corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up
after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of
getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the
politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to
be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a
sound bite: Throw the bums out! You might think I'm getting senile,
that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to
speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of
the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution,
tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies.Congress
responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the
wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business
leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While
we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems
to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of
asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents
and yours traveled across the ocean for.
I've had enough. How about you? I'll go a step further. You can't
call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm
ready and willing to have. My friends tell me to calm down. They
say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young
people." I'd love to, as soon as I can pry them away from their
iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to
speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen
to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll
tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real.
I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't
vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their
interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us. Who Are
These Guys, Anyway? Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with
this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them, or at least some
of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to
suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions
or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who
call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship,
not a democracy. And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing
Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy
argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not
just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common
principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.
Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and
make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party
of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR
and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of
great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have
all the leaders gone?
The Test of a Leader
I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I
understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured
out nine points, not ten (I don't want people accusing me of
thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership."
They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that
every true leader should have. We should look at how the current
administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be
around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go
to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test
to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's
up to us to choose wisely.
A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside
of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read
voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George
W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the
headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of
the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson
once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a
government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I
should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush
disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox
News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.
If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different
ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test,
how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of
arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you
just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big
point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what
they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have
listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the
wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up,
but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he
was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was
right.
A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try
something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush
prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is
spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of
flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his
certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with
Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in
the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President, the
explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the
problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe
recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course
and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how
can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush
then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My
instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told
Bush,"Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden
sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now,
it wasn't. Leadership is all about managing change, whether you're
leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get
creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that
at Harvard Business School.
A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at
the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality
and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to
know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their
time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they
seem. I don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to
drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with
telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been,
among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like
the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After
years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and
chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.
A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the
difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the
right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's
character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What
does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to
take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he
shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our
troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi
citizens) to their deaths. For what? To build our oil reserves? To
avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him
killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the
war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been
a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die
for a failed policy.
A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes
for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't
courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family,
but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than
your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing
and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating
table and talk.
If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when
you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public
appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He
did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in
auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were
all softballs.
To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION, a fire in your belly.
You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get
something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set
the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S.
President, four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his
ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even
told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was
catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.
It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only
ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record
set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing
Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so
little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find
the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.
A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy.
Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's
the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust
him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great
guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a
global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he
doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the
kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world
leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an
unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When
he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going
to go right through the roof.
A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've
got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got
to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush
brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him
competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've
got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life
support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so
far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a
problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to
be on the back burner.
You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this
Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in
the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham,
who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big
Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel.
Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got
going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your
common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of
vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have
common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know,
Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-j
ob-
Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush. Former President Bill Clinton
once
said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood
trying
to get into the reality-based world, and I like it here." I think
our
current President should visit the real world once in a while.
The Biggest C is Crisis Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is
forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up
on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war
when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to
lead when your world comes tumbling down. On September 11, 2001, we
needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We
needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George
Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida
when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty
minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can
see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back
to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the
panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return
to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day, and
he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We
were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting
for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there
was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings
and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero. That was George Bush's
moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd
regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq, a road his
own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush
didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides
himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't
scare the crap out of you,I don't know what will.
A Hell of a Mess.
So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no
plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest
deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the
manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are
getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are
skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our
schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle
class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry
out for leadership.
But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the
leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where
are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and
common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you
get the point.
Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than
making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo?
We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and
all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.
Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina.
Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to
the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that
were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering
down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's
just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out
what you're going to do the next time.
Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we
can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have
believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three"
referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more
important, what are we going to do about it? Name me a government
leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or
solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The
silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away
at our country and milking the middle class dry.
I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on
your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is
being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity.
What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News
will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some
spine for a change? Had Enough? Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice
of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out
because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had
the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments.
I've also experienced some of our worst crises, the Great
Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination,
the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent
years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this:
You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for
somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or
building a better future for our children, we all have a role to
play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to
action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too
late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the
horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.
434 N. Westfield Road . Madison WI 53717-1324
Phone: 608.833.1408