Thread by @BretDevereaux

This is a really baffling misunderstanding of both how countries make decisions and how high level negotiations work.

Important agreements are not hammered out, line by line, by world leaders sitting in conference rooms. They have state departments for that.

https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani/status/1420364981967720452

Normally, leaders meet, have 'productive dialogues' where they set priorities and see if they have common ground. Then diplomatic staff spend months hammering out the details into a workable agreement.

Then the leaders show up again to sign the thing and smile for the cameras.

Actual high-stakes negotiations directly between leaders are rare (not non-existent mind you, but rare). Which is part of why the former President's efforts to leverage his supposed brilliant one-on-one negotiation flopped so hard.

The business simply isn't done that way.

That said, I'd much rather have a leader who recognizes their limits in times of extreme stress and maintains their mental health than the normal authoritarian model where the unstable leader has repeated mental breakdowns which are then converted into policy by their underlings.

Like, Eisenhower kept a regular sleep schedule, played bridge & badminton, took up (& abandoned) sketching to cope w/ the anxiety for D-Day. He slept through the first hours.

Hitler stayed up late, took drugs & gave orders to imaginary units.

Guess who won?

(Hitler of course also slept through the first few hours of D-Day).

Every time I see these folks arguing that 'we need Many Men' to win whatever, they are invariably advocating self-defeating toxic BS rather than actual leadership.

Sigh at twitter's lack of an edit button, that should read, 'we need Manly Men' but I think you all get my point.

Men are actually necessary for society. Machismo is not.