Great Leader seems always to be first defined as what we don’t have at the moment. Digging deeper, I find descriptions include decisiveness, courage and a fervent wish to serve the definers particular ethnic or economic group.

And because everyone wants someone who believes in the same truth they believe, getting at what constitutes true leadership requires some study. I got caught up in this endless circle recently with a couple of friends. Reaching no consensus with them, I decided to do a reality check with Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, one time Roman Emperor.

“Begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial,” Marcus Aurelius said, getting quickly to the point. “All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil.

"Yes," I said cautiously, "but I don't understand the nature of a leader . . . what constitutes that spark?"

“I, who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful," he answered, "and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity . . . . For we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.” Nodding my thanks to the emperor I found a room without CNN, NPR or Fox and pondered. Though struck by his lack of cynicism, I was most surprised by both the absence of arrogance and his very visible humility.

It’s a different world today, my friends explain, and give me the look that wonders if I just got off the bus. Different, yes, but how? Marcus Aurelius was emperor of Rome when Rome ruled the known world. That’s a lot to look after. Bigger than Pakistan, meaner than Iraq. Other than some technological advances the world he dealt with was a lot like our world today. Threats abounded. Fundamental economic and social changes were in the making. Character mattered. Courage mattered. Flexibility mattered. Go back only a hundred years when Teddy Roosevelt talked about talking softly but carrying a big stick. We can argue about TR’s missing humility but not about his confidence in himself and in America's values. Where are the leaders today who possess the character traits history has always demanded of its best? The mistake in November will be settling for someone because they’re an improvement over what we have now. That’s not good enough. The bar is set so low we need a quantum jump in quality. If we’re very lucky in the next months we’ll begin to sense some potential greatness lurking in one of the American political parties. Maybe lucky is the wrong word. We are a nation governed by its people, after all. Maybe we need to make our own luck.

Scott
(Thanks to The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Book II, Chapter I)