Hanging On Too Long? Lessons in leadership
First published: August 1, 2024
Some political leaders are celebrated for their tenacity and resilience; others for their ability to recognize when it’s time to step down. President Biden’s decision to leave the 2024 race for the White House may prove to have been just in time, both for his legacy and the interests of party and country. Or not.
The British politician and classicist Enoch Powell wrote that “all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and human affairs.”
Margaret Thatcher, leader of Britain’s Opposition Conservative Party (from 1974 to 1979) was a case in point, and with parallels to Joe Biden. Lionized by the faithful through her victory at three general elections (1979, ‘83 and ‘87), Thatcher held onto the party leadership for a record 15 years (1974–90), and the premiership of the country for the last 11 of them.
As a young reporter in 1987, I followed ‘Mrs T’, as she became known in Britain, on her third general election campaign. I recall countless events around the UK where she was greeted by auditoriums packed with rapturous supporters. They were a cross between Nuremberg rallies and modern rock concerts. Laser lights flashed the message “Five More Years!” in staccato waves around the arena. That would prompt the audience to interrupt her speech again and again, chanting the slogan in thunderous unison. She went on to win that last election with a further thumping majority.
However experienced a politician, that has to affect your self esteem.
The reasons for Thatcher’s longevity weren’t entirely personal. The unelectability of Britain’s Labour Party throughout the 1980s played a part; as did an increasingly close relationship between Mrs T and a like-minded US president, Ronald Reagan, whose years in office closely followed hers.. As did events: including her high-risk but ultimately celebrated decision to go to war with Argentina in 1982 over the Falkland Islands. Then there was the slow car crash of the Soviet Union’s collapse, where Thatcher played a useful role in the detente between Reagan and Gorbachev.
But somewhere through Mrs T’s third term as prime minister (1987–90) she clearly lost her grip. She, and those who advised her, got it badly wrong over the imposition of a poll tax; a flat-rate residential tax levied per head, largely regardless of means. That hadn’t gone down well with the English in the 14th Century. So why try that again?
In 1989, the British public got a sense she might be losing her touch when she addressed the media in Downing Street shortly after her first grandchild was born with the words: “We have become a grandmother”.
There was a growing sense too among Thatcher’s increasingly exasperated colleagues that, for her, “five more years” meant five more, and then perhaps five more after that, in perpetuity, until she dropped. Why might she think that? Well, because: “I’ve transformed Britain for the better. I’m admired around the world. And no one can do this job as well as me (Mrs T). Nor should they!” was how many thought she rationalized it.
Then there was her increasingly routine humiliation of fellow cabinet ministers. Her victims included her charismatic finance minister (Nigel Lawson), and then her rather less charismatic deputy prime minister (Geoffrey Howe). In the end, it took an untypically blistering resignation speech in parliament from Howe, prompting a party leadership challenge, to send her packing.
Like Biden after his disastrous TV debate with Trump, Thatcher was wounded badly by failing to win outright the first round of leadership voting. Regardless, she came out defiant, exclaiming: “I fight on. I fight to win!” It took most of her cabinet, trooping in one-by-one the next day, to persuade her it was time to go.
With no apparent self-criticism, she wrote in an autobiographical account of her exit from office: “It was clear to me that if I remained in office, there would be deep and long-lasting divisions within the Party. Therefore, I concluded that the unity of the Party and the prospects of victory in the next General Election would be better served if I stood down.”
As Alan Watkins among others put it, in the story of her ousting: “Her greatest strength was also her greatest weakness – an unwavering belief in her own rightness.”
Sir Winston Churchill’s last stretch as Britain’s Prime Minister ran from 1951 to 1955, by which time he was 80 years old. While age in itself need be no barrier to office, unless rules or the people say otherwise, Churchill suffered a series of mini-strokes both before and during this final term, followed by a more serious one in 1953 that was kept secret. He recovered and stuck it out in office, though it was clear to many that his mental faculties were in decline.
Perhaps, Churchill was determined to compensate for being denied office in his Wilderness Years of the 1930s; or claim a payback for his role as wartime prime minister that the election of 1945 denied him. At least the nation was not at war by the end of his final term, but most agreed later that, both for Britain and his legacy, he hung on for far too long.
President Biden, while outwardly a more modest character than Thatcher or Churchill, appeared similarly convinced he was the best man to run again for office. This, in spite of clear signs to all watching that age and office had taken its toll.
Again, it took underwhelming polls, most of the Democrats’ senior leadership, and multiple big donors, to persuade him to quit while there was still time for a stronger candidate to step up and replace him.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG)’s tenure on the US Supreme Court, is a more nuanced case of staying too long. Appointed in 1993, RBG became a cultural icon and a champion of gender equality. Unlike politics, there are no term limits on Court appointments, nor until 2023 was there even an explicit ethical code that the justices were required to follow. So, appointment to the Court was, and still is, for life, unless the justice themself chooses to resign.
RBG’s decision to remain on the bench until her own death from cancer at the age of 87 clearly suited her personally – her mental acuity was not in question – but it did no favors to the future balance of the Court, nor her legacy. It also damaged the liberal causes she most fervently espoused, given that former President Trump was now in office and free to nominate a conservative replacement. Arguably, neither the personal politics of judges, nor timing, should matter in these decisions. Unfortunately, in the US, it does.
Contrast that with fellow liberal Stephen Breyer, the next justice to depart the Court (in 2022), with President Biden now in office. Aged 83 – more than old enough for any judge – and 27 years’ service on the bench, Breyer chose to resign while he was still fit and able to pursue other interests. The balance of the Court was maintained through his successor, Ketanji Brown Jackson. Country and interests were served. Breyer’s legacy was intact.