How Not to Organize a Government
The election of Barack Obama was an historic event in several ways, one of which was infrequently noted: his purely legislative experience. For the most part, we have elected presidents who had either been state governors or successful generals, and this reflected the common sense of the American electorate: it’s not easy to run a large organization, and the United States is an enormous and very fractious one.
Prior to Inauguration Day, the only large organization Obama had run was his campaign staff, and most of his political life was spent giving speeches, not making decisions. Yet a president must make decisions all the time, and very few of them are easy or pleasant. These decisions are quite different from those laregely rhetorical ones made by a legislator or a candidate. Senators and candidates have the luxury of tailoring their speeches and their decisions to the audience of the moment, and they can always adjust their rhetoric to changing circumstances. But every presidential decision creates enemies, and is much more difficult to change or adjust if it turns out badly.
Paradoxically, the most important early presidential decisions have to do with personnel, not policy per se, and many presidents have learned–too late–that personnel IS policy. Good managers know this; poor ones figure it out later. Governing well requires internal coherence, and while it is fine and dandy to invoke Lincoln’s team as an example of successful management of internal conflict, Lincoln paid an enormous political and emotional cost, and success came only when the president himself made the hard decisions and then imposed his will on his associates. Few presidents suffered so much, and suffering is not something we wish our presidents to endure.
So far, Obama’s personnel decisions unfortunately seem to guarantee maximum internal conflict. Internecine conflict between various agencies and personalities has raged for years, decades even, and it’s tough enough to manage them. But Obama has gone a step further, by creating “special envoys” and “czars” who threaten the turf of the traditional bureaucracies.
Interesting!
Golly, nobody saw this coming.
I knew that we were in for trouble when the race was down to three senators. Of the three, the least experienced was ultimately chosen. Peter Principle, anyone?
That’s the reason why it’s generally wiser to elect a candidate with a few more miles on the odometer, and who may not create more cats, so as to render the herding even more difficult.
Good luck. Um, to us.
Micheal sound as if he knows what he is talking about. It all make sense. Woe is us!!!
O has always played to the special interests who surround him. He is about to discover that you can please some of the people all the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Hell, you can’t even please most of the people most of the time. See how fast the “stimulus” bill seems to be falling apart. N.B.: We have not, since perhaps before the Civil War, elected such an inexperienced man to be President.
Apart from being about as dumb as Joe Biden who’s as thick as two planks, NMFingP – AKA “Zero,” suffers most from having had absolutely zero executive/management experience and therefore no pool of trusted lieutenants to from which to draw his help. And suffers almost as disastrously from being vulnerable to every kind of blackmail and coertion from the FBI-File owning Clinton Crime Family, with whose apparatchiks and consiglieres his “administration” is perforce as richly larded as, with Joe Stalin’s agents, was the traitor, Roosevelt’s.
With a steely determination to destroy his “administration” and, in 2012, to re-run the lying, looting, thieving co-serial-rapist recidivist RICO-racketeering Missus Cli’ton against him, the Cli’ton Machine will see to providing every screw up the mobbed-up murtadd Muslim Marxist doesn’t make unaided.
May Almighty God save us from them all!
Brian Richard Allen
To be fair to Obama, creating rivalry is hailed by many as “Lincolnesque.” I think that is dubious history and dubious advice, but fwiw.
When you elected a MESSIAH instead of a PRESIDENT, just what did you expect? And YOU know who you are!
The test is when someone tests him. I am no Obama fan but in fairness to him he is still a politician and not a leader. Only when some event (and let us hope it is not a disaster) forces him to lead will we see what he is made of and whether he can, in fact, lead.
So far he may have made bad choices but they can be redeemed; his choices will become much more narrowed and urgent when the ‘friends’ he is trying to appease in the Middle East turn out to be the same bullies they have been all along.
Weare so screwed
Brian brought up a point not specifically made in the article about the current vice-President. I work in the stock market and we’d cringe whenever Hank Paulson stepped to the podium. The market was sure to drop at least a hundred points. Joe Biden has a similar effect on me. Every time he opens his mouth I wonder, “What in the world convinced fifty million people, much less a preponderance of Delaware voters that this guy has a single molecule of brain power. He is an absolute moron, perhaps especially his ‘forte,’ foreign policy.”
He would do better to check with the IRS to be sure that they have completed the last few tax forms properly before he started creating new positions (patronages?) within the White House. The claim that he ran a great campaign as qualifier for running a great country still makes my head spin. He hired lots of people and spent loads of money to get elected, now he is hiring even more people and spending unimaginable amounts of money hoping to “get things done”. He has never run anything bigger than his household (even money on who is really in charge there) or balanced a budget for a business. I think he is still trying to wrap his head around the idea that all of the decisions will be his baby from now on. You can hire a thousand experts but when it come time to make the call there is only one person sitting at the desk in the Oval Office.
Some very valid and interesting viewpoints Mr. Ledeen.I think Obamas greatest deficiency is lack of leadership ability. He speaks well but there is no substance to his rhetoric and he has few central beliefs. His core values are pure Marxist pap and they do not create inspiration in his followers. When the paint wears a bit thinner on his veneer the nation will become disgusted with his incredible shallowness.
Ditto to self-hating Boomer.
A U.S.Senator is 1/100th of a CEO, governor, etc.
So, if this was all very obvious all the while, even to the likes of me, what do we make of Mr. Obama? Callow? Not bright enough? Bad to the bone? No good choice there.
Keep up the positive attitude and willingness to offer legitimate advice. I will be disgusted if conservatives and people critical of President Obama give him the same treatment and demonization that folks have given George W. Bush. I appreciate your commentary.
He’s done, he’s on empty with nothing left to offer after getting elected. He used it all up getting here. With no theme or inspiration to carry him, every word, every sentence is a strain, you can see it. Appointments are haphazard, policy isn’t even an organized set of values. Game over.Tilt.
The thing is, you can’t figure out what’s going to happen next with this guy. He appoints a bunch of serial tax evaders to his cabinet and high level positions in his administration, then, when the Daschle thing blows up in his face, goes in front of Katie Couric and says he “screwed up” and needs to own up to it. He also mentioned that he needed to send the message that there aren’t two sets of rules in this country, one for the rest of us and one for the elite. Well, jeez, I guess he gets the message (not to the extent of bumping Geithner of the stage, of course, but otherwise). You get the impression Obama is reasonably intelligent and wants to do the right thing, but he’s terribly inexperienced, and surrounded by people who aren’t that bright, who are where they are mainly because they helped choose this guy and groom him for the presidency. Problem is we don’t really have the time to do on the job training here.
This problem is what we tried to warn you about BEFORE the election!!!!!!
Members of the House and the Senate bring very little to the table in the way of experience in anything. They have the easiest jobs in the world, with all the labor being done by their staffs (who tell them how to vote on a given bill). The office holder spends all of their time planning and collecting money for their next election. Knowledge, ability, honesty are not prerequsites!
Bill Gates said something once when Microsoft was at its peak. If you take away maybe 30 key people, Microsoft would cease to be dominant. (paraphrased)
The president’s advisors are the key to his administration, and he’s just plain getting it wrong. Jimmy Carter’s 2nd term.