When Leaders Leave (or Don’t)

Last Friday (August 9) was the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation from the U.S. presidency. Given the numerous calls for PM Netanyahu to resign after Israel’s Oct. 7 debacle, President Biden’s announcement of leaving the presidential race for a second term, and most recently Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida bowing to internal party pressure and not running again for his party’s leadership, it’s worth looking in greater depth at the question of leadership resignation from office. In fact, there are several categories of such a phenomenon – here ordered from best to worst, with examples past and present. The first four categories (1-4) actually left office; the second group below (A-E) refused or continue to do so.

1) Leaving as a moral example: In 1977, PM Yitzhak Rabin resigned from Israel’s premiership because of a legal technicality for which his wife (Leah Rabin) was mostly at fault. After returning to Israel from his post in Washington DC as Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., the Rabins didn’t close down their overseas bank dollar account nor did they report the account, a technical violation of Israel’s (then) foreign currency rules. As a man of strict adherence to the law, Rabin felt it his duty to set an example for his countrymen – and resigned from office.
2) Resigning out of mental fatigue and depression: As a result of his deep disappointment in the way the 1982 Lebanon War, and advancing age, PM Menachem Begin resigned from office in 1983, but only after a year of leadership incapacity due to his depression.

3) Abandoning the reelection race: Leaving a leadership position doesn’t have to mean resigning from office; it can also entail refusing the attempt to be reelected. Joe Biden – 56 years after his Democratic predecessor Lyndon Johnson did the same – recently announced that he would not run for reelection. Of course, LBJ shocked everyone with his announcement, whereas Biden was pressured into doing so – but the source was the same: public apathy (at best) regarding their candidacy. Still, better late than never.

4) Leaving due to intense legal pressure: Nixon’s Watergate fiasco occurred in 1972, but it took two years for the full public disclosure of his involvement and culpability. He tried every trick in the book (not for nothing was he nicknamed “Tricky Dicky”), but ultimately succumbed to the threat of Congressional impeachment (with many Republicans supporting that move) and massive public outrage.
In all these above cases, the leaders left office before their designated tenure was up. The next five categories offer a darker picture: leaders who don’t leave when they should.

A) Running for office again when seriously ill: Joe Biden almost fell into this category, but ultimately (and fortunately for the Democrats) did step back. Not so an even more famous Democratic president: Franklin Roosevelt. It was clear to everyone in 1944 – including FDR himself – that he was very ill and almost certainly would not last another four years (and indeed, he didn’t), but still he ran again. One could argue that this was wartime – but that’s a stronger argument for resigning, given the huge mental and physical toll WW2 demanded of the leader of the Allies.

B) Not resigning despite a national disaster for which the leader is (at least partly) at fault: Until an official Commission of Inquiry (not yet established) issues an in-depth report, Israel and the world will not know the full extent of PM Netanyahu’s strategic culpability for the Oct. 7th disaster. Nevertheless, one need not wait until then. No less than Netanyahu himself attacked PM Olmert in 2008 for his alleged failures in the Second Lebanon War: “Prime Minister, you were supposed to check the army’s preparedness, its operations, and defense of the civilian home front. Denial of responsibility like this I haven’t seen in all my days. When the failure is so broad, what’s demanded is changing the prime minister who failed.” Add to this consistent public opinion surveys showing a large majority of Israelis who want Netanyahu to resign. Technically, he does not have to; morally-politically, it is the only truly democratic thing to do.

C) Trying to undermine the electoral process to stay in power: Jan. 6, 2021, was a day of constitutional infamy as President Trump egged on his most extreme supporters to “Stop the [wrongly alleged] Steal” and halt the Electoral College count in Congress, so that he could continue as president. Even if he is never found technically culpable in a strictly legal (or Constitutional) sense, his ongoing exhortatory efforts (and practical schemes behind the scenes) from November 2020 through that January, are enough to place him quite low on this leadership totem pole.

D) Staying in office by refusing to accept the election outcome and using government power to squelch the opposition: This is the present situation in Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro lost the recent election by a wide margin but refuses to leave, compounding this by arresting his opponent’s leaders and supporters. To be sure, one can easily point to other “democratic” leaders around the world who manipulate their elections (e.g., by controlling the media), but at least the outcome was in their favor. In Maduro’s case, holding on to the levers of power is a blatant undermining of the democratic rules of the game.

E) Perverting the democratic election process: This category leads all others quantitatively, with leaders who the first time around were elected in a generally fair contest, but then go on to completely undermine the system. Vladimir Putin changing the Russian Constitution is one recent, blatant example; Iran’s ayatollahs disqualifying ahead of time anyone deemed “not qualified” (read: too liberal) is another approach. Such perversions are arguably the worst of all as they not only distort the present elections but all those to come i.e., rendering (“rending” might be a better word) the end of that country’s democracy.

What to make of all this? The democratic transition of power is not merely or necessarily a technical one that is dependent on the election outcome. The quality of leadership should be determined not only by how one gains power, but also – perhaps especially! – by how one concedes power (or not). In that sense, it is clear which of the above leaders fail(ed) the test.