David Brooks, "The Follower Problem": David Doesn't Know If America Has a Leadership Problem

In his latest New York Times op-ed, "The Follower Problem" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/opinion/brooks-the-follower-problem.html), David Brooks contends that Americans are contemptuous of their leadership owing to the common perception that, "Those people at the top are nowhere near as smart or as wonderful as pure and all-knowing Me." Although he never uses the word, Brooks is describing the calamity of "narcissism" which has come to plague American society. Brooks goes on to say:

"I don’t know if America has a leadership problem; it certainly has a followership problem. Vast majorities of Americans don’t trust their institutions. That’s not mostly because our institutions perform much worse than they did in 1925 and 1955, when they were widely trusted. It’s mostly because more people are cynical and like to pretend that they are better than everything else around them. Vanity has more to do with rising distrust than anything else."

Brooks doesn't know if America has a leadership problem? Odd. Brooks need only examine the mediocrity of the man now occupying the White House, whose primary motivation is self-aggrandizement. Better still, Brooks should examine the sub-mediocre field of candidates who sought this year's Republican nomination for president. Would Brooks have us extol the virtues and submit to the whims of Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich? I grow nauseous at the thought.

Brooks concludes his opinion piece by observing:

"To have good leaders you have to have good followers — able to recognize just authority, admire it, be grateful for it and emulate it."

Yet our narcissistic society, in which image counts more than substance, has yielded a crop of self-serving politicians. And whereas Brooks disparages today's assumption that "Public servants are in it for themselves," in this instance your average Joe and Josephina, who brought this pestilence upon themselves, have it pretty much right.