How Not to Organize a Government
Take the Middle East, for example. Most every president since Truman has fought it out with the State Department’s Arabists (who didn’t want to recognize Israel in the first place) and their cohorts in CIA and elsewhere. They fight with all the usual weapons, from leaks to “go slow.” Bush’s efforts to spread democracy in the region foundered against these big rocks, as he and Condoleezza Rice were effectively neutralized. Now Obama has added Special Envoys Mitchell, Holbrooke, and, we are told, Ross still to come. Will Hillary sit still while these guys take policy into their own hands? I don’t think so.
This is a prescription for furious turf battles (who reports to whom? through what channels? where will the czars and special envoys sit? If they are physically close to the president, they automatically gain advantage over those in Foggy Bottom or Langley, as well as those over in the Pentagon. Unless Obama really can change human nature, he has guaranteed an even larger war of all against all than the usual near-chaos.
Many of these appointments are undoubtedly made in response to internal political pressures; he’s trying to satisfy myriad special American interests, along with the various foreign countries who are lobbying furiously on behalf of their friends. Obama’s trying to satisfy Saudis and Israelis, Palestinians and Turks, hawks and doves. But he will only make things worse by giving each of them a champion inside the White House, or State. That simply ensures the battles will spread over the entire government. If he comes to realize this, he should just give each czar and special envoy a medal, and govern the old fashioned way.
The same applies on the domestic side, where his czar has just resigned. He would be well advised to close down the slot altogether, make his desires clear to his Cabinet, and then crack the whip when they get out of line (and they will).
Finally, there’s the ostensibly simple matter of office space. I read here and there that the West Wing is overcrowded, with four people sharing space that used to be reserved for one. That, too, is a mistake. Work in the White House is tough, long, and not particularly highly paid. The least he can do for his people is give them creature comforts in the building. Otherwise he’s going to have whining, which is the worst thing that can happen to a leader.
Good luck.
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.