For about a quarter-century of my working career I was a boss, but for the first few months of my life in the big chair I wasn’t a good one.

I became a boss because I was good at my regular job, and someone thought I might also be good at helping others get good at it.

But in the beginning, I made one of the dumbest mistakes a boss can make. I wanted my people to like me. In my mind, I confused liking me with respecting me.

It was, of course, a disaster.

Seeing the problem, my own boss called me over for a chat. He told me he wasn’t paying me to be my employees’ best friend. And then he offered the simple observation that probably saved my management career.

“It’s a funny thing about leaders,” he said, “people expect them to lead.”

Not dictatorially, of course. Intelligently, wisely, and even compassionately. But in the end, you’re paid to lead your employees, not befriend them. You listen to them and evaluate their ideas, but in the end you must act. You have to do what your knowledge and judgment confirms is best. In other words, you lead, even if you lose a few friends in the process.

I bring this up because I’ve been baffled by the ongoing abandonment of the principles espoused for the last hundred years or so by the Republicans currently inhabiting the United States Congress. Traditionally, these are the guys and gals who take pride in presenting themselves as the true grownups in the Room of Governance, and they’ve often successfully acted that way, in contrast to the constant low-grade hysteria typically displayed by Democrats.

But lately, congressional Republicans have been acting a lot more like appeasers than leaders. In their rush to get their noses browned by the election-deniers, anti-vaxxers, and violence-mongers among their party, they’ve collectively fallen over themselves to get to the front of the back of the line.

Space precludes me from sharing all the examples available. One could start with 9/11-denier Representative Marjorie Greene, R-Ga, who made her most recent headlines by staging a stupid shouting match in the halls of Congress with AOC. It was behavior befitting a ten-year-old in need of a time-out chair, not a dignified member of the Grand Old Party.

There’s also the hypocrisy involving Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wy). In a secret vote last February, members of the House lopsidedly kept her in her leadership role. But when a second vote this month was on-the-record, Cheney sank like a stone.

Consider also what happened to Senator Mitt Romney (R-Ut) who was literally booed at the convention of his own party in his own state for his conscience-driven vote (twice) to impeach the former president. In the process, Utah Republicans came off looking like a bunch of ungrateful doofuses towards one of their most famous favorite sons.

Finally, there’s Senator Lindsey Graham (R-GA) who I guess deserves modest credit for finally saying out loud what has been privately obvious since January 6th—that if there is a conflict between Republican principles and Donald Trump, it’s the principals that must be discarded. Fealty to the former president must be maintained whatever the cost.

Personally, I am uncomfortable about the cult of personality that has sprung up around Donald Trump. I don’t think it’s good for the party, or America. When a party is willing to modify or abandon its time-proven principles to cozy up with a man of such demonstrably flexible morality, it’s difficult to see how the nation will benefit in the long run. There are too many historical parallels to the nations that have traded the rational rule of law for the coronation of bullies.

And today, there are too many Republican leaders willing to abandon the necessary steel of leadership to continue trying to be their voters’ BFF’s. I tried that once, and it doesn’t work. Never has. Never will.

Someone once asked, “what doth it profit a man if he gaineth the whole world and loseth his soul?” Today’s answer: maybe a few focus-group points. That’s not leadership — it’s not even close — but these days that’s how we measure salvation.

Chris Huston is an author and award-winning columnist living in southern Idaho. Connect with Chris on both Facebook and Instagram at Chris Huston-Finding My Way and at chrishustonauthor.com.