Barack Obama has "charisma", the special power of a person to inspire fascination and loyalty. But with the eruption of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's recent remarks and a worsening economy, a new situation is testing Obama's charismatic appeal, and this raises an important question. Does charisma originate in the individual,...

I wrote a piece on Bush in Sunday's Los Angeles Times which compared him to Woodrow Wilson. A number of people have questioned the comparison, so I thought it useful to open a broader conversation. (A more detailed discussion is in my new book, The Powers to Lead.)

Wilson...

As we choose our next president, Americans not only want someone to ably handle a crisis after a hypothetical 3 a.m. phone call. We also want someone who reinforces our identity and tells us who we are. As I argue in The Powers to Lead, we judge leaders not only...

Hillary Clinton's tough comeback campaign refocuses attention on the important issue of women and leadership. Does gender really matter?
Management experts argue that leadership is increasingly a "woman's world." Research shows the increased success of what was once considered a "feminine style". In terms of gender stereotypes, a...

The crisis on September 11, 2001 produced an opportunity for George W. Bush to express a bold new vision of foreign policy. But a successful vision is one that combines inspiration with feasibility. And Bush did not get that combination right. Among past presidents who have been able to combine...

The United States needs to rediscover how to be a "smart power." That was the conclusion of a bipartisan commission that I recently co-chaired with Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state in the Bush administration. A group of Republican and Democratic members of Congress, former ambassadors, retired military...

Basically, Hillary Clinton was right. We need to combine hard military power with the soft power of our attraction (that she refers to at the end of her speech) into a smart power strategy. We failed to do that in Iraq. We lacked adequate forces to suppress the looting...

The recent National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism shows that Bush's policy in Iraq has helped to strengthen Al Qaeda. The CIA's John Kringen testified to Congress that "we actually see Al Qaeda central being resurgent in their role in planning operations." Bad news. It suggests we will be hit again...

I was recently at a dinner in DC at which a prominent neo-conservative columnist took issue with a politician who said the Iraq War was immoral. The pundit argued that our intentions of removing a mass murderer and promoting democracy were highly moral. But if we have learned anything from...

Although Washington remains transfixed with Bush's surge in Iraq, some foreigners are already asking whether failure will lead America to turn inward as it did after Vietnam. Will unilateralism be followed by isolationsim? I doubt it. The domestic politics regarding global climate change are becoming more favorable for cooperative action....

In Davos a decade ago, I asked a Silicon Valley CEO what would be the future of privacy in the age of the internet. His reply: "Going, if not gone. Get over it." Today in a panel on "Privacy: Your Life as an Open Book," Jonathan Zittrain presented a chilling...

With 800 CEOs, two dozen heads of state, and topics ranging from global poverty to Web 2.0, Davos is impossible to describe. Like the blind men touching the elephant, each participant feels a different part of the beast. My favorite touch for the day went as follows: In a plenary...

Day 1 at Davos. A maddening process. Too many people and too many topics crowded into too little space and time. But worth it for the insights that can be gleaned from people drawn from all over. One nice feature this year is that the Young Global Leaders selected by...

Shortly after the election, the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, suggested a bipartisan formula for the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the president rejected this recipe for a graceful exit, and has substituted an escalation plan partly devised at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute....

At the end of 2006, the British government announced that it was banning the term "war on terrorism." I wish President Bush would resolve to follow that example in 2007 and refer to a struggle or campaign, not a "war."

Tony Blair's government banned the term not because of the...

The disastrous policy in Iraq has sucked all the oxygen out of the Washington policy system and too little attention is being paid to the looming problem of Afghanistan. Ironically, that is the war that is truly linked to 9/11 and in which our NATO allies have come to our...

America is not winning its war on terrorism. We are not even discussing it intelligently. An official National Intelligence Estimate confirms that we are creating more jihadist terrorists than we are killing. President Bush is correct that we have disrupted Al Qaeda as an organization, but we have simultaneously enhanced...

What a mess! Once again the extremists have prevailed, and capitalized on inept American policies. Bush's pressure for elections helped produce Hamas in the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah in the Lebanese government, and his efforts to force regime change pressed Syria closer to Iran. Israel was correct to use force to...

George W. Bush likes to consider himself a transformational leader and president. In his words, he does not play "small ball." His supporters like to compare him to Reagan and Truman with the implicit premise that history will also treat him kindly after a rough spell in the polls. In...