The metaphor that casts our leaders as “actors” on the “world stage” makes me cringe. Could there be a more misleading and romantic metaphor for international politics? Granted it is a great way to attract the avaricious and vain to the leadership.  Tell them they will be like Marlon Brando or Audry Hepburn , a  great star in the great unfolding drama of history.  Frighteningly enough, this is exactly how poli-sly students are taught to think about international politics.

Sure as Shakespeare noted,

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,

But the so called actors on the world stage tend to determine other peoples “exists” and might even prevent some people from entering in the first place. This is exactly the problem. An actor works in the realm of fiction. Our politicians clearly don’t need the encouragement to dabble in fiction. The result can be very embarrassing.  Not to mention deadly. And even white lies* can have damning and terrible consequences.

This metaphor clearly contributes to the lemons problem (as we say in ickonomics) that we face when it comes to “leadership.”  All the nice people don’t really care about bossing other people around. The quintessential “A-hole”, however, thrives on power, and naturally takes advantage of any chance to tell people what to do. Its an ironic maladjustment inherent to hierarchy. The people at the top must step on other people to get there and naturally the ones who rise to the top also tend to be the most ruthless.  Which leads us to our next old as dirt smart dude quote, Niccolo Machiavelli, “If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud.”

The powerful and ambitious must one-up one another in ruthlessness to obtain power. They must be willing to break the rules because everybody else is. It is impossible to be successful without having the same edge. Look at Jimmy Carter. Everyone says he was just too nice of a guy. Another example is the behavior of banks during the mortgage bubble inflation. If they didn’t dabble in the risky stuff the customers would take their money somewhere else to get a higher return. Bush most likely won the Presidency twice by voter fraud in Ohio and Florida. Gore was just too much of wimp for that. If you can’t take the heat, then don’t try to raise hell. That’s what I say.

As if these natural inclinations of society aren’t enough, we go around glorifying our rulers and making them celebrities. The media also loves to do this, because they need characters and stories, not accurate news. Accurate news tends to get boring. George W. Bush is a lone-start desperado type. Palin is a rouge. Apparently because she is as dumb as the average Republican voter.  President Obama is the ambassador of change we can believe in. This fact is vetted by his brown skin but contradicted by his economic team. Although he is being cast more and more as a Jimmy-chump-Carter type as the republicans do everything they can to block legislation. Or a Maoist if you like to take your commentary from nationalist snake oil salesmen.

But what about those actors in the big show. Hugo Chavez, the new great red tyrant, who is stealing the land and oil from foreign companies that they worked so hard to steal from the indigenous populations in the first place. There is also Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran. He is currently playing the scary nuclear zealot.  Kim Jong Il just wasn’t ready for the spotlight. Hopefully Mr. Arhmadinejad isn’t planning on doing anything too drastic during the second act.

All these characterizations though lead us to believe in images of our leaders. We then judge them based on their how they are playing their role. This allows us to conceptualize political issues on the basis of feeling rather than thought. It is always so much easier to feel than to think.  The whole don’t-think-double-think routine. Chavez isn’t a democratically elect populist grappling with an elite controlled media and U.S. backed coup attempts, he is tyrannical socialist. Ahmadinejad isn’t trying to arm his country as well as most the countries that oppose him. He is bat shit crazy hell-bent on destroying Israel and all the rest of the infidels. (To be fair though he is a theocratic ruler, which to some qualifes for bat shit crazy [depends on if you're from Texas], and seems a little hell-bent on destroying Israel.)   Bush isn’t a dumb-shit megalomaniac. He just your average guy who isn’t scared to go it alone and get ‘er done. Obama isn’t a moderately liberal democrat. He is the harbinger of change and great imperial wizard of freedom. Need proof he represents change you believe in? He is black, if you haven’t noticed.  It doesn’t matter his economic team has been borrowed from the most elite offices of Wall St. It doesn’t matter has escalated the conflict in Afghanistan. And it doesn’t matter that he has acted like a big puss-ball when it came timeto trying to get promised health-care reforms passed. All that matters is that he is the hope and change we can believe in (because he is black). All these characterizations are great, just great… only  not of you want to understand reality.

Our leaders aren’t actors playing out some great drama. They rule us in real life. Their decisions have real (often dire) consequences.  So next time you turn on the boob- tube and some fast talking pundit  present a caricature of a world leader, take a second to think about why your being presented with this crude image of a human being instead of a less dramatic profile.