As this book will show, traits like overconfidence and self-absorption should be seen as red flags. But instead, they prompt us to say, ‘Ah, there’s a charismatic fellow! He’s probably leadership material.’ The result in both business and politics is a surplus of incompetent men in charge, and this surplus reduces opportunities for competent people—women and men—while keeping the standards of leadership depressingly low.

You take Jarret and you get beatings, burnings, tarrings and featherings. They’re a package. And there may be even nastier things in that package. Jarret’s supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret’s talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. We could wind up in a war. Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.

Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool. To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen. To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.

Strong female characters were out of fashion in the fiction of the time. President Jarret and his followers in Christian America believed that one of the things that had gone wrong with the country was the intrusion of women into “men’s business.”

Len, but the world is full of needy people. They don’t all need the same things, but they all need purpose. Even some of the ones with plenty of money need purpose.”