THOUGHTS ON PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP

I didn't watch the President's speech last night. I find it more and more difficult to watch this man as he flounders about, trying to find the right presentation to improve his poll numbers, incapable of understanding that he is dropping in the estimation of the public precisely because they are becoming aware of his shortcomings. Barack Obama might have been a good community organizer, and was almost certainly a good law professor, but he never learned to run anything of any size other than a political campaign (the nuts and bolts of which are managed by a professional campaign manager). He never learned about leadership, or had an opportunity to acquire and practice leadership skills.

We have seen this before. Some men are simply not good at providing inspiration to their people, or are not good at cutting through the distractions to get to the heart of the matter, or not good at pulling other strong personalities together to work as a team. Some men can do some of those things, but not others. I had thought that Barack Obama would be good at being an inspirational leader, since he seemed so good at it during the campaign, but that was, apparently, an illusion. President Tele-Prompter seems a bit more like Robert Redford in The Candidate..."What do we do now?"

I have know Presidents in my lifetime who were combat tested leaders (Kennedy, Ford, George H.W. Bush). Some showed those skills (Kennedy during the missile crisis, Bush during the first Gulf War), others did not (Ford could do nothing to get the nation's economy out of the stagflation that afflicted it during his brief tenure). I have seen Presidents who were pure political animals (Johnson, Nixon, Clinton). Johnson and Nixon were brought down because their vision was so limited, Clinton was able to skate by without facing the music. I have seen Presidents who should have had leadership skills, but didn't (Carter was a Naval Academy graduate, a submarine officer, and the governor of a state, but seemed to be clueless about leadership as President) and those that should not have had such skills, but did (Reagan was an actor, but he also had natural leadership ability, which helped him get elected as President of the Screen Actor's Guild, and later as governor of California). George W. Bush seemed at times to know how to be a leader, and at other times to lack those skills.

So far, Barack Obama shows almost no leadership ability whatsoever. Unlike Johnson and Nixon, he also seems to lack political acumen. As we face the oil spill crisis, and a potential security crisis on the Korean peninsula, and a potential economic and political crisis in Europe, and a potential security crisis in the Middle East, and the ongoing war in Afghanistan, this is very bad for the country. But, it is a mistake we could have avoided in November of 2008. It is a mistake we can start to rectify this November, and can overturn in November, 2012. Unfortunately, the world will not wait for us to make those changes.