How Many Leaders Does It Take (to Change a Light Bulb)?

There are many versions of this joke; it may be mere political folklore:

1. The Ben-Gurion & Eisenhower Version

Eisenhower lamented how difficult it was to be the president of 170 million people. David Ben-Gurion fired back: “You think that’s hard? Try being the prime minister of two million prime ministers.”

2. The Golda Meir & Richard Nixon Version

During Golda Meir’s first state visit to Washington in September, 1969, seeking critical military aid, Nixon suggested she didn’t appreciate the difficulty getting things done in America: “Madam Prime Minister, you have to understand, it’s difficult to get things done here, America is not like Israel; I’m the president of 150 million Americans.”

Meir countered, “Mr. President, I assure you I do understand, and if you think that your job is difficult, consider: I am the prime minister of three million prime ministers!”

3. The Charles de Gaulle Version

The joke is so perfect for capturing a national psyche that it actually collided with another famous quote. French President Charles de Gaulle famously grumbled in front of Golda Meir, “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” Meir responds: “Can you imagine how difficult it is to lead a country that has three million prime ministers?”

4. The Shimon Peres Version

When Shimon Peres served as Prime Minister, he frequently retold this joke on the international diplomatic circuit, but he updated the numbers to reflect Israel’s late-20th and early-21st-century population booms. He would often tell American or European dignitaries: “You are the leader of millions of citizens. I am the prime minister of seven million prime ministers.”

5. The Benjamin Netanyahu Defense-Minister Version

In more recent decades, the joke evolved to reflect how specialized and deeply invested the Israeli public is regarding military and security strategy. Bibi and other modern Israeli politicians have occasionally shifted the punchline slightly to fit cabinet roles, joking: “It is not hard to be the Defense Minister of a country. What is hard is that I am the Defense Minister of nine million Defense Ministers, all of whom know exactly how the military should be run better than I do.”

6. The Restaurant Kitchen Version

“Running a Michelin-starred kitchen isn’t about cooking. It’s about trying to convince a room full of twenty-something culinary school graduates—all of whom think they are the next Gordon Ramsay—to stop reinventing the menu for five minutes and just chop the onions.”

7. The Software Engineering Version

In tech, there is a famous axiom known as Sayre’s Law (“In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue”), which engineers turned into a classic industry joke:

“If you ask a team of 50 senior software engineers to build a nuclear power plant backend, they will approve it in ten minutes without looking. If you ask them what color to paint the bicycle shed in the employee parking lot, you will get 50 different blueprint designs and a three-week corporate civil war.”

This joke is funny because it reveals a truth. Question for your table: What is that truth? And if it’s true, is it inevitable? (Is there a version of this joke that works for your place of work or family or social setting?)