Alberto Gonzales, U.S. Attorney General, and Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank, are both publicly embattled leaders at the moment. Gonzales is struggling to overcome the still-growing outcry over the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys and Wolfowitz is under fire for transferring his girlfriend at the World Bank and giving her a significant raise. Both still have the full public backing of the President of the United States. Both may lose their jobs in the days ahead.

I won’t take a position on the merits of the charges against either or on whether or not either should resign. But I am willing to bet that Wolfowitz has the better chance of surviving. Here's why.

It is a fundamental rule of leadership that the failure to understand that you alone do not have the power to determine when something has changed from a “situation” to a “problem” is fatal. In business, one learns quickly that if a customer thinks you have a problem, you have a problem. If the board or your shareholders think you have a problem, you have a problem. Whether you agree with them is irrelevant. Your job is to address the problem.

Gonzales has spent far too much time trying to argue that there is no problem in the Justice Department’s actions long after his rough equivalent of customers, board, and shareholders – the Congress, the press, and the public – decided to the contrary. Until he acknowledges the validity of the concerns that confront him, any actions he takes will seem insincere and inadequate. He can protest all the way to the unemployment line. (Disclosure: I am not related to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.)

Wolfowitz, on the other hand, has been upfront in acknowledging the existence of the problem and apologized even while maintaining that he didn’t mean to do anything wrong. He has produced some documentation that he took earlier steps to minimize conflicts of interest given that he was dating a colleague at the World Bank. These actions won’t satisfy his hardcore critics but they will make it easier for those on the fence to support some sanction short of termination.

Both men are lightning rods and have not expended much energy to broaden their base of allies beyond their ideological and political bases – people whose support they each need now. Only one has acknowledged that the people with whom he disagrees may have a point. And that may make all the difference.

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