In leadership there is always a process of persuasion by which other people are induced to pursue common objectives. The most effective persuasion is the leader's good example, his testimony, his coherence. The authentic leader does what he preaches, he is a moral reference.

Moral references are especially necessary in a society with a crisis of values, such as the current one. This crisis is transmitted like some diseases, by contagion, and the leader is not vaccinated against the influence of this evil. In fact, for some political leaders the end (winning) justifies the means (for example, financing electoral campaigns with supposed donations from companies grateful to the party in government).

The leaders of earlier times used to submit themselves to the "test of the mirror", a self-assessment with which they checked whether the person they saw in the mirror every day was the person they wanted to be. In this way they fortified themselves against one of the greatest temptations of the leader: to give in to what at any given moment meets with general approval.

This temptation sometimes implies sacrificing truth to useful truth and the good to moral laws established by consensus or by the votes of a majority. Those who do it or tolerate it induce confusion between the legal and the moral (not everything that is legal is moral). Moreover, they usually end up being victims of their own fallacy (they end up believing it).

 The criterion for discerning between what is morally right or wrong cannot come from the issue of votes; with that procedure what today is declared good tomorrow can be considered bad, and vice versa. Moral subjectivism always leads to relativism, to a dead end.

The leaders of modern political parties often adapt and sacrifice the initial message of their electoral campaigns to the successive predictions of the polls. For example: "we are losing because people want us to be more "liberal" on the abortion issue; to get back on track we have to promise them that, if we win, free abortion will be a right.

 The fashion for surveys has not prevented the usual aurúspides from continuing with their obsolete official document, although with another name (fortune tellers, seers, etc.) and changing the inspection of the entrails of the victims for cards and crystal balls. This survival of fortune tellers may be due to the fact that their clients (unlike the analysts of survey results) are never disappointed; also because it is a much cheaper resource .

Authentic leadership is closely related to moral authority. In Roman thought authority consisted not so much in the exercise of power (potestas) as in its foundation (auctoritas), which meant two things:

The staff qualitative argument achieved in the course of an exemplary life; 2. The result of a biographical growth at the service of the community.

This quality staff justified that certain people were given command responsibilities. Their lived values invested them with authority and legitimized them to make decisions that affected others. This authority was based on trust and on the credit that is granted to a person when we recognize a moral superiority in him or her.

The best mirror in which leaders who govern a country can and should look at themselves is that of some historical leaders with great prestige for their quality staff and moral leadership. For example, Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas More, Abraham Lincoln, Conrad Adenauer, Nelson Mandela, Corazon Aquino.

Pericles exercised a government and patronage that turned Athens into the main cultural center of the time. His great influence over his people (he was elected 14 consecutive times as strategist) was due to his moral authority. Power was not an end in itself, but a means to rule from agreement with areté (virtue). Plutarch praised his dominant qualities: affability, moderation, concord, honesty, prudence.

  Lincoln used power not to dominate, but to do good for others, to serve. He made his goodness staff a political principle and a code of governmental behavior. His moral integrity gave him credibility. People followed him because of his truthfulness and because he was true to his convictions, incorruptible and dedicated to the cause of the humble. He courageously accepted the great challenge of abolishing slavery by going against the tide of half the country and being willing to pay a high price for it. He contributed a valuable spiritual heritage, inspiring other peoples to defend democracy.

How many Spanish political leaders today would be willing to look at themselves in that clean mirror?