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Van Jones and sustainable leadership

Jeff Trexler | Monday 7th September 2009

I've been paying particular attention to l'affaire Van Jones over the past few days for a reason that goes beyond ideology and politics. I remember Van from law school--he was in my wife's graduating class at Yale a couple years ahead of my own. He was a presence practically from the day he first showed up on campus, a personality so forceful that you just knew he was going to make a splash.

Well, splash he did--so much so that some of his more colorful statements led to his resignation as the green jobs czar. The intrepid Nathaniel Whittemore--whose own blog on social enterprise is a must-read--has asked what I think about Van's resignation under pressure, so here, in brief, is what's been on my mind.

The irony of the critical attacks on Van is that his job with the White House was precisely what would have worked to make him more of an establishment figure. Van is a paradigmatic example of what Max Weber described as a charismatic leader. The statements and actions through which such a figure establishes social authority--particularly when rallying individuals across an array of distinct yet ideologically gatherings--are qualitatively different from those conducive to survival (let alone success) within a government bureaucracy. A typical arc for someone in Van's position is akin to what Weber aptly described as the routinization of charisma--just like macrolevel systems, leaders themselves can subsume their more revolutionary impulses into less outspoken management.

The differences in organizational culture--especially rhetoric--between rallying a movement and developing practical public programs create an interesting tension within a representative democracy. We elect charismatic leaders to run a routinized bureaucracy, a practice that may seem self-contradictory but is actually rather inspired. Maintaining a steady infusion of charisma outside the relentless bureaucratic routine helps keep the system from becoming a maladaptive machine. Hence the flourishing practice of appointing "czars"--given the routinizing pressures of a confirmation system that exerts equally relentless pressure to conform to convention, unconfirmed advisers offer a way to infuse the political system with inspired leadership beyond the level of the president himself.

If a democratic government is going to work, we need to acknowledge that leaders say & do things in one organizational culture that they will likely temper in another. To foster conditions in which the only acceptable leaders are people who conform to the conventional is to push the system closer to collapsing on itself. In place of blending mundane management with charismatic leadership, we are at risk of creating a society run by soulless mediocrities who say whatever is convenient to get a government job.

President Obama is a smart guy, and I wish he would have taken the opportunity to educate people in how our system works. A defense of Van could have been a real teachable moment not just for public politics, inasmuch as the tension between charisma and bureaucracy runs through all forms of organizational leadership. As for Van, he'll be OK. His speaker fees will rise, as will the size of his next book advance, and his authority within the sustainability movement will only grow. Yet for society at large the loss is palpable.

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