President Bush is a good example of leadership out of touch with reality, especially when the obvious is not obvious to those in leadership positions. He is a sad caricature of himself and represents the worst case I can imagine of someone having a severe lack of situational awareness.
I’m talking about the loss of common-sense judgment, not just a difference in political ideology. Bush’s big goof is a very public one, and I predict his reversal on the subject by the time you read this column. But severe damage will have been done to his already poor credibility.
Now I don’t think mistakes are to be feared; if you don’t make any, it means you are not taking risks in life. You must take risks to learn, and you must learn how to deal with setbacks to grow.
But one of my fears is making a dumb mistake, one that is public, and that fear stresses me out. I can think of only one thing to make it worse, and that is exactly what Bush is doing: Defending his decision to approve the sale of port rights to an Arab nation represents just how deeply flawed is his ability to use sound judgment in making key decisions.
The situation you and I face now is scary. Who’s minding the store? Who’s steering the ship? What were his advisers thinking? Who will be the next scapegoat, and how will he conduct damage control on this fiasco? I believe the Bush administration will go down as one of the most incompetent in modern politics.
This column is supposed to be about leadership development and peak performance strategies, not politics, but I just can’t sit still and watch such an incompetent display of stupid government decision-making and outrageous conduct by our president and remain silent.
OK, so I’m on a rant. You should be too. If you are not, get out of the way because I’m not finished.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff should have been fired along with FEMA chief Michael Brown after the Katrina disaster. He was a judge, not an emergency expert or government administrator. His incompetence was as bad if not worse than Brown’s. Can you believe he was on the talk-show circuit defending Bush’s latest political decision?
I guess Vice President Dick Cheney was still handling the hunting incident. Of course, Cheney had such astute situational awareness and self-preservation instincts that he managed to quell the story from the press for several days.
We elected this president the second time — I’m not sure about the first — but I know we didn’t anoint him. So what appears to be a certain level of secrecy in his administration, along with a pattern of questionable decision-making, is a situation I find disturbing.
My question to the Republican Party and to the people of our country is simple: How much is too much? I mean, just how out of touch do you have to be to be removed or severely reprimanded when you are in a major leadership position such as the president of the United States?
It is said that people get the government they deserve, but I’m not sure we deserve what we are getting — unless we stay quiet about it. Then that’s another story. Are you going to stay quiet about the competency of our government? I hope not. I hope you are not that out of touch.
Jerry Stein, motivational speaker and executive coach, can be reached at jerry@careercoach.com or (770) 988-0500. Go to careercoach.com for more info and to sign up for his free newsletter.
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Posted: Saturday, March 25, 2006
Article comment by:
Franklin Gardin
