Some Leaders Can Be Replaced, Some Cannot, and Some Never Mattered

Jared Diamond, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing on geography and history, takes up leadership in his newest book, Prophets, Profits, Coaches & Kings. The subtitle states his question: when do leaders matter. Diamond argues that leaders fall into three types, the uniquely qualified who alone could have done what they did, the talented but replaceable, and those who made little difference at all.

His way of sorting them, which he calls the Hamlet test, asks whether anyone else alive at that time, given the same chances, could have produced the same result.

Diamond argues that the truth lies between two easy stories. One story says history is driven by exceptional individuals imposing their will on events. The other says individuals hardly count because conditions decide what happens. He argues that each case must be judged on its own.

He tests the idea with President Harry Truman, who took office after the death of Franklin Roosevelt without the usual preparation for the job. Diamond says 95 of the 96 sitting senators at the time could have handled the presidency as well as Truman did, and most of them had longer and more distinguished records.

He reaches the opposite conclusion with William Shakespeare, the English playwright. Writing Hamlet required steady work with a playing company, years of stage experience, and major plays already completed, including Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. Historians can name about 20 other playwrights working in England in those years, and Diamond says some wrote good plays but none wrote anything close to Hamlet.