Humbuggery and Manipulation

📖 The Scoop

Must all leaders have dirty hands? Must they all defy the moral and intellectual conventions of their own societies? Building on his earlier books, F. G. Bailey tackles these questions as he takes a hard look at political leadership and concludes that it is a difficult art which inevitably involves chicanery. "My intentions are modest," he writes: "to demonstrate that there is a dark side to leadership; to show that it is found everywhere and at all times; to encourage people to open the closet, whenever they get a chance, and find out what is really hidden in there; and, finally, perhaps even to urge compassion for those intrepid and (sad to say) indispensable people who allow their souls to be corrupted by the exercise of power." To illuminate the moral and social limits of leadership around the world, Bailey draws on examples from his own research in Orissa, Europe, and elsewhere, from his work on bureaucracies, and from political and military biographies, novels, and historical accounts. He carries his controversial argument into two domains: that of the leader and his mass following and that of the leader in his entourage. Dealing with the masses, he asserts, calls for both simplification of issues and falsification of capacities and attainments; the leader's world is a world of image-making and humbug. He explains how these techniques work and why they find an accepting (if not always gullible) audience. He demonstrates how manipulation and intimidation can control an entourage, and he shows how such reputedly decent leaders as Franklin Roosevelt, Churchill, and even Gandhi used these strategems just as readily as did other, less reputable leaders. Recent American political scandals only serve to underline the timeliness of Bailey's subject and to support his theory of the persistence of "humbuggery." With its highly distinctive point of view, this book is sure to interest -- and may well outrage -- anthropologists, political scientists, psychologists, and other interested observers of the political scene. Book jacket.

Genre: Biography & Autobiography / Political (fancy, right?)