Jim VandeHei: He’s Bored on Third, and Thinks You Want to Hear How He Hit a Triple

Close Writing Boots readers know I’m not a fan of Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei, having written about his daily routine here, “A Day in the Rigorously Meaningless Life of One Corporate CEO.”

But reading the May 17 Washington Post profile that embarrasses VandeHei with his own self-loving words—many of them from his new “book,” which I put in quotes because he wrote it entirely on his cellular telephone—I began to realize that my dislike for VandeHei is really my problem with authority. Or more to the point, it’s my problem with many of the people who I and my loved ones and friends and colleagues all have to deal with, who are in authority.

They are more like Jim VandeHei than they are not.

“There will never be another me.” This philosophy isn’t unique to leaders; it’s everybody’s motto (as my advertising director dad never tired of reminding his copywriters).

But inside the searching soul of someone in charge of a group of people of any size, “There will never be another me” begins to morph into weirder things.

Things like:

You probably think my life has been easy, but I had it rough, growing up. How rough? Well, that’s not the point. Probably rougher than you. Let’s not dwell on the past.

Whatever I have done or studied to get ahead is what you should do or study. Whatever I have neglected is a waste of your time, too.

The business/industry to which I have devoted myself is core of the human universe and everything else either orbits around or floats off needlessly, like flakes of dust.

I am CEO and you’re not, so you’re all a little dumber, lazier, less courageous-—or all three. Seriously, wake up, people.

I am the only one around here with the balls to tell people the truth.

To the extent that I am crazy, it is good to be crazy.

To the extent that I am enraged, it is good to be enraged.

To the extent that I am impatient, it is good to be impatient.

To the extent that I am rude, it is good to be rude.

As the result of an amalgam of all my decisions, I have made it to the top. So every decision I made must ultimately have been correct. Even the incorrect ones! As I say in my book …

And please know this: I am truly a good person, in the end.

However, “I honestly don’t give a shit what people who don’t know me think about me.” Oops. That one’s a direct quote from VandeHei, who nevertheless wrote a book—did I mention, he tapped the whole durn thing out on his cellular telephone?—that he hoped would be read by as many thousands of people who don’t know him as possible. (People who don’t know him being his most likely readers.)

I want to pull up short of claiming that it is impossible for a leader to maintain a reasonable sense of proportion and a humble sense of place and a deep and true and total respect for the other people in and around the enterprise. I run a small outfit of my own, after all, and even in this position, not betraying my Inner VandeHei requires annual, monthly, daily, hourly meditation. Which occasionally results in failure, for which I must be forgiven. How occasionally? How big a failure? You’ll have to ask the ones who forgive me.

Because I promise you—I promise them!—you’ll never read it in a book.