Astringency is what we need

what is necessary for  leaders in our timë is astringency. Astringency means telling people what they don’t want to hear and leading them where they don’t want to go. It’s not comforting people about their current situation and reas­suring them it will get better. It’s telling them that the situ­ation is likely to get worse and that only their efforts can determine how soon it will start getting better. Astringent leadership is Churchill calling on Britons to “brace our­selves to our duties.”

The effort required to address this crisis is trivial compared with Britain repelling the Nazis. But the situation is getting more dire. Remember all the talk about how America has been “borrowing from future generations” with the feder­al deficit, consumer debt and so on? Well, it’s been going on for more than a generation, and the future is now. There have been so many false alarms that maybe Americans can be forgiven for thinking this is an­other one. But no one is going to forgive those lous.(Michael Kinsley:Time)