I spend a lot of time hoping I'm going to be wrong. Does that sound like a strange thing to say? Let me explain. I tend to think the worst of most people, but especially those who are our leaders. Be they political, religious or whatever I'm usually of the opinion that those who want to be leaders are the worst people for the job because they want it.
Most people who strive to be leaders of anything from a country to a clubhouse do so with the intent of imposing their will on whoever is subject to their leadership. How many leaders of anything do you know who have genuinely striven to reach a consensus of some sort among those who they lead? I don't care what the politics of the person are, whether I agree with them or not isn't even relevant; they don't give a rat's ass for those who have a different opinion.
Leadership these days is all about divisiveness and the obtaining of power, not about building a unified country or whatever. You can tell there is something wrong with the system when one of the most important polls for a politician is his disapproval rating. As long as I only alienate this many people I can still cling to power and impose my will on whomever I'm ruling. Now that's leadership.
I'm not naïve enough to believe that anybody is going to be able to have a 100% approval rating; there are always going to be extremist elements of a society who aren't going to be satisfied with anyone or anything. But shouldn't the object of a leader be to try to find common ground with as many people as possible while guiding his or her organization, country, or religion to achieve its goals?
That's right, I said its goals, not his or her goals. Most countries already have a series of goals laid out for them to try to achieve on a daily basis – it's a thing called a constitution. In Ontario, Canada, where I live, when you incorporate a company as a not for profit organization you write out a constitution that contains the objects of the firm and how you plan to go about achieving them. So if one of your objects is the eradication of child poverty, you have to say how you're going to go about getting that done.
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