If you read just one article this week, make it this one (H/T Mike at Crime & Federalism)  ñ William Deresiewiczís lecture to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point last year. A snippet:

Thatís really the great mystery about bureaucracies. Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running thingsóthe leadersóare the mediocrities?

Because excellence isnít usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until itís time to stab him in the back. Jumping through hoops. Getting along by going along. Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that, like the manager of the Central Station, you have nothing inside you at all. Not taking stupid risks like trying to change how things are done or question why theyíre done. Just keeping the routine going.

I tell you this to forewarn you, because I promise you that you will meet these people and you will find yourself in environments where what is rewarded above all is conformity. I tell you so you can decide to be a different kind of leader. And I tell you for one other reason.

As I thought about these things and put all these pieces togetheróthe kind of students I had, the kind of leadership they were being trained for, the kind of leaders I saw in my own institutionóI realized that this is a national problem. We have a crisis of leadership in this country, in every institution. Not just in government. Look at what happened to American corporations in recent decades, as all the old dinosaurs like General Motors or TWA or U.S. Steel fell apart. Look at what happened to Wall Street in just the last couple of years. [.  .   .]

We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but donít know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but donít know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether theyíre worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of expertise. What we donít have are leaders.

What we donít have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Armyóa new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.