"What these monsters fail to realize is that Americans are now more resolved than ever to see freedom triumph in Iraq and around the world."

- House Republican Conference Secretary Rep. John T. Doolittle of California, reacting to the deadly terrorist attacks last week in London.

DYING POLITICIANS

Venture capitalist Pascal Levensohn was among those who participated in the Aspen Institute's just-concluded Socrates Society seminar on effective leadership, led by David Gergen, former adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton.

"Our group of seminarians consisted of 21 men and eight women and included Jews, Christians and Muslims," Levensohn notes on his blog, saying the group "learned from each other as we identified some of the important characteristics that we believe will define the next generation of American leaders."

His brief summary of the three-day seminar:

- Individuals do matter in history, and one person can make disproportionate contributions to society as a leader.

- Leadership means the capacity to mobilize others in the pursuit of shared goals.

- The quality of a leader's relationship to followers will enhance or detract from the leader's ability to be effective.

- Effective leaders can be good - and they also can be evil.

- Leaders is shaped by early personal life experience, and their ability to contribute will be circumscribed by their own historical context.

- Leaders should be encouraged to lead from positive core values and should be influenced by an internal moral compass.

- Leaders are passionate, charismatic individuals driven to make a difference in their society; they find fulfillment and self-actualization from leading.

- The best form of leadership combines idealism and pragmatism. Pragmatic leadership requires flexibility and the ability to be ruthless in the course of reaching your goal.

- No leader lives without personal flaws and weaknesses. One can be an effective moral leader despite having personal flaws (for example, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King) while striving to manage one's darker side.

- Leaders can't erase their weaknesses, but they can manage them. Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton are examples of leaders who failed to sufficiently manage their weaknesses.

- We live in the midst of a spiraling crisis of leadership in the machinery of U.S. government because talented people increasingly choose not to become a part of the government.

- Role models for the next generation of American leaders are more likely to come from the ranks of entrepreneurs (such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs), not from politics. Continued...