Courtesy of Shuttershock. I was once on a writers’ festival panel discussing “leadership” with authors and thinkers who were much older and wiser than me and I came away feeling pretty cranky. Two of the three other panellists were men who had written biographies of extraordinary (and male) political leaders. The conversation bugged me so much that I’m still thinking about it four years later. Have you ever lain awake at night revisiting the premium riposte you never actually delivered to that bully or boss? Of course you have. You are only human. But I am a columnist, and the joy of being a columnist is that I get the opportunity to rewrite history and air my trivial grievances.
There was a sort-of consensus reached on this panel: that when it came to decent political leadership, the world was, apparently, in a drought. Putting party lines aside for a moment, do you think that’s true? Certainly, Australia has churned through about double the number of prime ministers it should have in the past two decades. And as I write, Liz Truss has just been ousted as Britain’s PM, her crazy economic strategy having failed. Over in America, President Joe Biden’s popularity and approval ratings are — to put it politely — devastating. Even in a country like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, it’s fair to say that Kim Jong-un is no Kim Il-sung.
It’s tempting to look at this trend and draft a kind of obituary for some bygone era of “the greats”, but I think that is borne of a lazy nostalgia. I have a theory about how we perceive greatness, not only in politics but in art and life, too. It’s about the distance required to put someone on a pedestal.
There was a time, not long ago, when most Americans didn’t realise their president used a wheelchair. Franklin D Roosevelt went to great lengths to disguise his disability at events in the ’20s and ’30s, and was even able to destroy photographs showing his use of mobility aides. Compare his ability to control the narrative with, say, that of the Canadian leader Justin Trudeau, who was shamed by leaked images that show him donning brownface in high school and, later, for a gala at a school where he taught. He’s grown a beard since those photos appeared — just to show us all how much he’s grown up since then. And what about those hilariously pathetic paparazzi shots of the then French president François Hollande getting dropped off at the house of his alleged girlfriend (now wife) on the back of a scooter? These guys aren’t giving us greatness, but it’s hardly the first time a national leader has had racist incidents in their past or infidelity in their present.
One of the subplots in each successive season of Netflix’s “The Crown” is the story of The Firm’s attempt to walk the line between living alongside and living above the ordinary citizen. With the arrival of radio, then television, there are lengthy conversations about how much to reveal of the royals’ real lives. They knew that distance and mystery allowed space for people to have faith in their greatness. The thing is, with the arrival of zoom lenses and the internet, and the death of publishers’ so-called “gentleman’s agreements”, leaders in the late 20th century were revealed to be shockingly human. Just think of the footage we’d have if today’s paparazzi followed yesterday’s prime ministers. Imagine all the shenanigans Bob Hawke got up to at university that escaped documentation. What would Winston Churchill’s comms team have put on his Instagram Stories? Picture for a moment, if you will, a TikTok account run by Abraham Lincoln’s interns.
In the creative world, people often look down their nose at artists who share their lives on social media. Gatekeepers and purists can peddle the same nostalgia that those men on the panel did. Sure, posting to an app isn’t art (unless you’re a performance artist, which one could argue we all are, and that is a whole other column). But why is it that making yourself available to your audience is deemed the road of the sellout?
This is definitely a part of the anti-social-media rhetoric some artists are delightfully capable of. For most of us millennials being online isn’t optional. It’s a crucial component of our professional portfolio and acts as an all-important digital business card. But the content machine is an ever-hungry maw. Much has been written about how we have to feed our very selves to the algorithms if we are to maintain our audience. My question is: what does this do to the possibility of being perceived as a great artist? Much of the awe the literary world feels for authors such as Zadie Smith and Sally Rooney is facilitated by their refusal to document their lives for their followers. Most debut authors do not have the luxury of this non-participation.
I’m not immune to these clichés. I recently read Amy Odell’s biography of Anna Wintour, “Anna” (2022), and on discussing it with my friend Bridie, we agreed that part of Wintour’s power is her imperceptibility. Those sunglasses! The feeding frenzy (pun intended) when any crumb of detail (pun further intended) drops about her diet or daily habits! We’re addicted to the speculation, the deliciousness of filling in the gaps ourselves. When we debated who could possibly succeed Wintour in her various tastemaking roles, we both gravitated towards figures whose personal lives were distinctly not on display. We long for the awe-inspiring leader. Sometimes that means we really don’t want them to be just like us.
In trying to get to the bottom of my internal inconsistencies, I began wondering if the inverse is also true. Am I guilty of ignoring the greatness displayed by the people I know the most about? Very possibly. I’m too judgemental — an asset for a columnist but a poor trait for a person who lives in the world. One way in which my partner and I complement each other, for example, is that while I seem capable of showing greater generosity to strangers, he is consistently kinder and more giving to the people we actually know. Sometimes, when there are opportunities to be “good”, I’ll forgo them for the chance to be “great”. It’s not that ambition sometimes veers off course and into sacrifice, it’s more like the two are parallel tracks. I’ve spent too long drinking the Kool Aid of greatness that pours from the biographies of unknowable people — either alive or dead.
Lately, though, I’ve been challenging myself to shift my thinking about who gets to be great. A friend walked courageously into a second pregnancy after a traumatic first birth. What is that if not greatness? Someone near to me is shepherding their shockingly young friend through their final few weeks in palliative care. A family member quit their stable job to pursue a dream of contributing to renewable energy technology. These are heroic undertakings. Maybe I can get even more quotidian? I’ve long been impressed by my father’s retirement hobby, beekeeping. If I reflect on its impact on biodiversity and his willingness to learn a complex new skill in this chapter of his life, I can choose to elevate the significance of his work. What was once called a hobby might be better appreciated if it were framed as artisanship, expertise and custodianship of the environment.
Here’s what I wish I’d said on that panel: the great long-dead were just as prideful and fallible as the living. Some of them had annoying food allergies leading to IBS. Some of them snored. The olden times allowed only certain people the opportunity to display certain types of greatness, and it was possible to hide the details that didn’t fit the narrative. Which presidents bit their nails?
Which kings and queens literally stank? Only the lazy biographer perpetuates the inverse relationship between perceived greatness and familiarity. If we knew as much about these historical figures as we know about our current leaders, the stars in our eyes would fall away and we’d get a much clearer view.
And if I went back to that panel, I’d also confess my own hypocrisy and commit to a reallocation of my praise. It’s never too late to start. I’m going to spend a little less time imagining an unknown person’s excellence and a little more time recognising the people around me for the legends they are.
