Leadership Quote by Tom Wolfe

Wolfe’s jab lands because it flatters the reader’s desire for moral clarity while quietly accusing that desire of being a dodge. Calling cruel leaders “mad” feels humane and practical: if atrocity is a symptom, politics becomes a kind of public health problem. Screen out the “psychotics,” keep the rest of us safe. Neat, soothing, almost bureaucratic.

The sting is in “very comforting.” Wolfe is naming a psychological convenience, not offering a diagnosis. If evil is insanity, then the rest of society is exonerated: institutions didn’t fail, citizens didn’t enable, ideology didn’t seduce. The problem isn’t us; it’s an aberrant individual. His second sentence mimics that managerial optimism - “we’ve got the problem solved” - with the clipped confidence of a policy memo, which is precisely the point. It’s parody of technocratic faith, the belief that complex political violence can be prevented by better sorting mechanisms.

As a journalist who chronicled status, power, and the myths professionals tell themselves, Wolfe is also taking aim at a modern habit: medicalizing what is often strategic. Many “terrible things” are carried out by people who are lucid, methodical, even socially adept - and who operate inside systems eager to reward ruthlessness. Labeling them mad is not just inaccurate; it’s politically anesthetizing. It turns complicity into an administrative oversight.

The subtext is bracing: the real threat isn’t a rare lunatic at the top. It’s ordinary ambition plus permission structures - parties, bureaucracies, media ecosystems, voters - that make the unthinkable achievable.