2018 was the year of the woeful world leader

The dictionaries have decided on their 2018 words of the year. Oxford picked “toxic.” Merriam-Webster went for “justice.” Collins chose “single-use.” I’d zero in on “misgovernment.” Surely, 2018 saw a staggering number of countries woefully misruled by the worst crop of world leaders in recent memory.

The most egregious examples are in the news every day. U.S. President Donald Trump tops the chart as he runs out of straws to clutch in trying to convince Americans that his election has been good for them. The stock market bump of which he was so proud is disappearing. The fiscal deficit is the highest since 2012. Trade wars notwithstanding, the trade deficit is at a 10-year high.

The turnover on the presidential staff has reached catastrophic levels: 65 percent of Trump’s “A Team” had been replaced since his election as of Dec. 14, according to the Brookings Institution, and that doesn’t even include cabinet members (12 of the 24 officials in the cabinet have been replaced and now a 13th, Defense Secretary James Mattis, is leaving). Trump is having trouble filling once-coveted positions, and the officials he fired and those who have resigned are sometimes unconstrained in criticizing him — a situation that, were it to occur in a corporation, would have tanked its stock.

All this doesn’t even scratch the surface of what Trump has done. The damage he has wreaked on the U.S. role in the world is only beginning to manifest itself. Almost everywhere (with a few exceptions such as Israel and South Korea) favorable views of the U.S. are declining, and people are becoming convinced that the U.S. doesn’t care about other countries’ interests. Alliances are loosening and the multilateral world order is creaking.

Almost as obvious is the misgovernment of the U.K. Blind to the reality of disappearing economic growth, slowing business investment and a growing trade deficit, Prime Minister Theresa May’s government has persevered in trying to pull the country out of the European Union and in fantasizing about withdrawal terms that the EU rejected from the start. Destroyed by the EU’s dream team of super-competent negotiators, May’s bungling, ill-prepared representatives flailed about, resigned in exasperation and finally produced a deal nobody really wants — not even the EU, though it’s skewed heavily in its favor. With her support weak even within her own party and her negotiating options exhausted, May now is setting up the country for a no-deal Brexit scenario that would cause massive disruption to millions of lives — anything to avoid the only reasonable option, a new vote on EU membership for a U.K. public that found out this year it had been misled by Brexit campaigners who lied about the consequences of withdrawal.

This was a year of chaos in other democracies, too.

The populist government in Italy drew up a fantasy budget that included a version of a universal basic income and fought with the EU over it (only to end up lowering its unrealistic projections) while the economy slid toward recession.

In Spain, Mariano Rajoy’s center-right government buckled under the weight of corruption scandals and the outgoing prime minister spent a whole day at a restaurant as Socialist rival Pedro Sanchez unseated him in a kind of parliamentary coup. Sanchez, however, isn’t doing too well, either: His government is beset by scandals, he faces a reprise of troublemaking by Catalonian separatists that made it almost impossible for Rajoy to focus on anything else. Now, for the first time in decades, a nationalist-populist party, Vox, is gaining popularity and has won representation in Andalusia’s regional parliament.

In Belgium, the government has just been toppled by a nationalist party campaigning against a nonbinding United Nations migration pact that Belgium approved along with 163 other countries.

It hasn’t been a great year for strongmen and hybrid regimes, either.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was re-elected, but has since seen a drop in popularity following a highly unpopular retirement-age increase. Russia’s economy and Russians’ incomes are stagnating, and Putin’s been constrained overseas by a string of public failures by Russia’s aggressive military intelligence service and an inability to build a working relationship with the U.S.

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, once feted as a bold reformer, has seen his reputation destroyed by the October murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The brutal act has undermined international support for MBS, as the prince is known, and thrown a monkey wrench into his plans to reduce the Saudi economy’s oil dependence.

The shortage of competent, clear-headed, hubrisfree leadership in today’s world may be a freak accident. But if it’s the new normal, living in this world will require new skills from ordinary people, too. Vigilance and easy mobility in case a country deteriorates intolerably are two of them; a capacity for constructive protest is a third. Bad leadership isn’t just something we read about on news sites. It could signal the deterioration of institutions, both global and domestic, that shape our lives.