When Power Eats the Judgment Needed to Leave
In December 1989, Nicolae Ceausescu stepped onto a Bucharest balcony and heard something he had never, in thirty years of absolute rule, encountered: booing. He stopped mid-sentence. The expression is worth finding — it is not anger, and it is not fear. It is the face of a man who has genuinely never considered that such a sound might be directed at him. He was executed four days later, which in the circumstances was probably merciful. The expression is the curiosity. Not the execution. --- The standard explanation for why powerful men refuse to leave runs roughly as follows: they fear prosecution, they cannot bear irrelevance, they love power for its own sake. All of this is true. It is also beside the point, because it locates the problem in individual psychology rather than in the machinery that produces it. The actual mechanism is less dramatic and considerably more depressing. An advisor whose position depends on your continued tenure does not tell you that your last de...
