While calling leaders "the basest of men" is pretty harsh and judgmental, I think there is some truth to the basic idea that the people that seek leadership are a little bit different than the rest of us. They are prone to believe they are exempt from the rules that apply to other folks, and prone to mistake their own self interest for the interest of the enterprise.
We see a couple of examples in the news currently here in the Bay Area. The recently elected Sheriff in San Francisco has just been convicted of spousal abuse, while here in Berkeley, after folks in town got pretty upset when an older fellow was beaten to death in his yard while the police were occupied elsewhere, the Berkeley police chief sent a uniformed officer to knock on the door of a local reporter about midnight to try to get a story in the newspaper shaped more to his liking.
In my experience the people that become leaders aren't necessarily smarter than others, but they are more ambitious. They are good at focusing on their own self interest, and how to achieve their goals but often a little bit insensitive or downright oblivious to whats in the interest of the enterprise of which they are a part.
I think this is especially true in the public sector, where productivity is often hard to measure. People that are verbal and social and focused on their own advancement can climb the ladder faster than people that are more focused on what is good for the enterprise.
In the private sector, although the politicians and the media often use the terms " entrepreneur " and "businessman" interchangable, to me they are usually completely different personalities. It seems to me many Corporate CEO's are more notable for their ambition than for their management skill. There are currently many in business that wrap themselves in the mantle of the entrepreneur to use the good will we all hold toward entrepreneur's that create new ideas and enterprises as leverage to gain advantages from Government that to not benefit the wider economy.
