"Leadership is, among other things, the ability to inflict pain and get away with it - short-term pain for long-term gain"
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George Will distills a hard truth about governing: leadership is not a promise of comfort but the making of choices that hurt now to protect the future. The phrasing is deliberately abrasive. To lead is to impose costs, change habits, curtail entitlements, or demand sacrifice, and then retain enough consent and legitimacy to continue. The political skill is not cruelty; it is persuading people to accept discomfort because a larger good is at stake.
Will, a conservative essayist steeped in Madisonian skepticism about short-term passions, often argues that statesmanship requires representing the future, a constituency that cannot vote. Short-term pain for long-term gain captures the problem of time inconsistency: citizens and politicians alike are tempted by immediate relief, while deferred costs accumulate offstage. Leaders bend that timeline. They raise interest rates to kill inflation, reform pensions before they collapse, invest in infrastructure that strains today’s budgets but pays off for decades, or prosecute a difficult war to avert greater peril.
“Get away with it” names the political dimension. Pain without prudence is failure; prudence without endurance is still failure. To get away with it, a leader must earn trust, distribute burdens visibly and fairly, communicate ends as well as means, and share the sacrifice. Churchill offered “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” and credibility grew from honesty. Paul Volcker’s rate hikes inflicted recession, yet inflation broke, and legitimacy returned with results. Success reframes the pain as investment rather than punishment.
There is an ethical edge to the formulation. The ability to inflict pain can be abused, rationalizing vanity projects or ideologies that offload costs onto the powerless. The test is moral and empirical: Are the sacrifices necessary, proportionate, and aimed at goods that truly materialize? Are those who decide also accountable to those who bear the burden? Will’s aphorism challenges leaders to join fortitude with foresight, and citizens to reward the courage that protects tomorrow rather than the flattery that soothes today.
Will, a conservative essayist steeped in Madisonian skepticism about short-term passions, often argues that statesmanship requires representing the future, a constituency that cannot vote. Short-term pain for long-term gain captures the problem of time inconsistency: citizens and politicians alike are tempted by immediate relief, while deferred costs accumulate offstage. Leaders bend that timeline. They raise interest rates to kill inflation, reform pensions before they collapse, invest in infrastructure that strains today’s budgets but pays off for decades, or prosecute a difficult war to avert greater peril.
“Get away with it” names the political dimension. Pain without prudence is failure; prudence without endurance is still failure. To get away with it, a leader must earn trust, distribute burdens visibly and fairly, communicate ends as well as means, and share the sacrifice. Churchill offered “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” and credibility grew from honesty. Paul Volcker’s rate hikes inflicted recession, yet inflation broke, and legitimacy returned with results. Success reframes the pain as investment rather than punishment.
There is an ethical edge to the formulation. The ability to inflict pain can be abused, rationalizing vanity projects or ideologies that offload costs onto the powerless. The test is moral and empirical: Are the sacrifices necessary, proportionate, and aimed at goods that truly materialize? Are those who decide also accountable to those who bear the burden? Will’s aphorism challenges leaders to join fortitude with foresight, and citizens to reward the courage that protects tomorrow rather than the flattery that soothes today.
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| Topic | Leadership |
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