I think that Richard missed printing the best parts. Namely that Obama has been nothing but a part time anything for his entire life. He has not remained as one thing or another in job or person.
Second, there is the idea that leaders grow in office, but the question must be considered how much “growth” the office of President and the United States can sustain. Growth indicates facing challenges, experiencing failures and, hopefully, learning what to do when confronted with the next challenge.
Most leaders who achieve such offices already have met untold numbers of challenges in their lives allowing them to bring a greater amount of experience to their new position and respond with better decision making skills. It allows them to adjust quickly and make fewer mistakes. Obama has no such experience. We know it and so did the people that elected him. Obviously, people bought into his “hope and change” as an idea that his lack of experience would mean knew ideas, that Obama would be some form of radical change agent.
In fact, the article specifically notes that Obama was determined to shed “old ideologies”. Of course, he has not turned out to be so much of a radical change agent as a lackadaisical leader who surrounded himself with old realists and policy makers even as he expressed the desire to leave their ideas behind.
For most, this represents Obama’s maturity in leadership in recognizing his own weaknesses and surrounding himself with people who would shore up his weaknesses (I won’t go into how this lack of knowledge was Palin’s downfall and that the ability to talk like a leader superseded the ability to act like one). It would on any other day or person to be a sign of this maturity. The problem is that while Obama eschews any ideologies he seems to lack a set of principles on which to govern.
He wrongly assumes that principles are “blanket policies”:
Obama has emphasized bureaucratic efficiency over ideology, and approached foreign policy as if it were case law, deciding his response to every threat or crisis on its own merits. “When you start applying blanket policies on the complexities of the current world situation, you’re going to get yourself into trouble,” he said in a recent interview with NBC News.
The appropriate response to that is when you do not have a set of principles to guide your policies, you are going to get yourself into trouble. Principles do not make “blanket policies”. Principles are the foundation on which good policy is made. “Events” may require policy reviews, but principles, not ideologies, invariably lead to the right policies.
It is ironic that those who were so set against Bush’s principles for leadership have now discovered that the lack of principles is even more destructive.
