Within a week, Sepp Blatter and Dennis Hastert, leaders with significant power in two very different worlds, comprised an unexpected duet of personal demise. It’s worth asking why and what this says about the perennial search for leadership.
My experience in the worlds of both religion and politics convinces me that one of three issues is at the heart of the catastrophic demise of any leader — money, sex, or power. Sometimes it’s a trifecta of all three together, like the case of John Edwards, the former Democratic presidential candidate. But in virtually every case, a leader’s personal inability to exercise appropriate constraint and control over one or more of these three dimensions of life can lead to careers that crumble and reputations that become shattered.
That’s why, despite all the fascination on the external qualities, traits, and strategies of successful leaders, it’s their internal lives that can be far more decisive in their long-term ability to be transformative leaders — or not. But that requires attentiveness to the powerful but often hidden dynamics of one’s interior life, which “successful” leaders rarely have the time or courage to undertake.
With influential, powerful leaders, such internal neglect can end up having vast external consequences. Sepp Blatter, from all appearances, was addicted to the power of being FIFA’s leader, which was bolstered by the enormous amounts of money coming under his control. He said that women’s soccer (football) could generate more interest if the players wore tighter shorts. Had he been a U.S. politician or president of a university, his career would have ended. But not Blatter, whose hold on the governance of the world’s most popular sport seemed impregnable.
It took the power of the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI to unravel the culture of corruption dominating FIFA. Blatter’s sudden resignation — after his re-election four days earlier that had only slightly more credibility than that of Zimbabwe’s re-election of Robert Mugabe — came only because evidence was unmasking reality, right to the top. Blatter’s specific criminal liability, if determined, is not really the point. As a leader, he shaped, condoned, and nurtured an organizational culture that mirrored his own addiction to power and the money that sustained it.
What’s at stake here, however, are not the careers of FIFA officials in Zurich hiring defense lawyers and wondering if they should fly to the safety of Barbados, but what the millions of young people who actually play the game conclude about corruption and accountability. On a flat surface in nearly any neighborhood, kids kick a ball. This means more to most than politics. They also understand corruption, but simply wonder whether it pays off in the long run. That’s why Sepp Blatter’s interior weaknesses can affect millions — and why accountability matters.
It’s also why the aggressive investigation of the FBI and the Justice Department indictments, with more to come, could have the unintended consequence of being one of the Obama administration’s most effective foreign policy initiatives. A whole younger global generation will remember that it was President Obama’s administration, including an African-American female attorney general, who had the courage to clean up the global governance of the sport they love, and not Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping.
Dennis Hastert’s demise was less spectacular, but no less tragic and revealing. A graduate of Wheaton College, Hastert became something of a political icon there. A renowned educational center of evangelical influence, Wheaton established the J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy, and Hastert assisted in raising $10 million to support the effort. Its goal was to assist students in “the understanding of market economies, representative democracies, limited government, and the redeeming effects of the Christian worldview on the practice of business, government and politics.” As the longest serving Republican speaker of the House, Hastert was regarded as one of Wheaton’s most influential and famous graduates.
His rise to speaker came in 1999 when other GOP House leaders, Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston, where guilty of sexual misconduct in their marriages at a time when the GOP-led House was proceeding with impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton because of his misconduct with Monica Lewinsky. The House Republicans wanted someone with integrity who would not create a public relations problem and turned to Dennis Hastert.
When Hastert left his role as speaker, he became a lobbyist in Washington, making big money. His recent demise came when he was indicted by a grand jury on charges that he lied to the FBI about paying $1.7 million to a former high school student who allegedly was sexually abused by Hastert when he was a wrestling coach. Thursday, Hastert will be arraigned in a Chicago court.
While Blatter was wedded to power at any cost, Hastert allegedly fell victim to sexual impulses that violated sacred boundaries. But what links this duet of demise is the fear of transparency. It’s a theological truth that sin hates the light, and thrives when it is hidden. FIFA was housed in Switzerland, in part, so that all of its internal financial dealings could be closed to public scrutiny. Sepp Blatter’s corrupt leadership depended on an environment of secrecy. And according to the indictment, Denny Hastert was paying millions in “hush money” to keep part of his life secret.
Transparency is not just a politically correct slogan. It’s an ethical value with theological roots. Blind trust in leaders doesn’t work; people need to see that the actions of leaders are trustworthy.
The presidential election process is already, and prematurely, thrust upon us. New candidates are emerging with such daily regularity that they barely make the news. Immediately they are judged, and characterized, by where they fall on the political spectrum — how far to the right, or moderate, or center, or center left, or left they are. And those convictions matter. I’ll admit to being one of the first to see how closely a candidate’s political convictions and philosophy match my own.
But that’s not all that matters. The news of Sepp Blatter and Dennis Hastert should remind us of this. At the end of the day, the inner qualities of a potential leader — and especially a president — can end up having huge external consequences. No, we can’t expect them to be saints. It’s a start, in fact, if they can at least recognize that they are sinners. And then we can hope and expect that they are living well-examined lives, that they have dealt with their inner demons, and that they are living by habits and practices that can integrate their deeper selves. From such leaders one can expect wisdom, courage, and discernment. Their internal work can externally affect millions for the good.
Wes Granberg-Michaelson is the author of Leadership from Inside Out: Spirituality and Organizational Change (Crossroad, 2004). His most recent book is From Times Square to Timbuktu: The Post-Christian West Meets the Non-Western Church. For 17 years he served as General Secretary of the Reformed Church in America, and has long been active in ecumenical initiatives such as the Global Christian Forum and Christian Churches Together. He’s been associated with the ministry of Sojourners for 40 years.
Images: Sepp Blatter in 2007 kojoku / Shutterstock.com; Dennis Hastert in 2005 by Doug Bowman via Flickr.com
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