The first refuge of weak leaders is blaming mistakes on subordinates. It's unacceptable in the military, in corporate hierarchies, and in other settings where the responsibilities and authorities of leadership are understood and practiced. Harry Truman enshrined the concept with the famous maxim, "The buck stops here." The principle is that a leader is responsible for everything his or her organization does or fails to do. When a U.S. Navy ship runs aground, the captain of the ship isn't going to point to a junior officer who was serving as OOD (officer of the deck) and say, "It's not my fault; it's his fault!"
President Obama obviously doesn't understand this basic concept of leadership. When he finally got around to responding publicly to the incident of the Christmas underwear bomber, he tried to lay blame on the intelligence community. Not my fault, he was saying — they screwed up. What he doesn't understand is that they work for him, and he's responsible for what they do.
The President also doesn't understand another important principle of leadership. Good leaders give credit for success to their subordinates and take the blame for failures. Does anyone doubt that he would have made liberal use of the vertical pronoun in taking credit for a first year in office with no serious terrorism attempts?
It's also evident that Obama doesn't know much about intelligence. In that sense, he's no different from most politicians. They seem to think that providing enough dollars to the various intelligence agencies of the U.S. government will ensure that surprises never happen and threats never go undetected. The truth is that intelligence will always be imperfect because it deals with one huge uncertainty — what our enemies intend to do. In the wake of 9/11 the politicians decided to reorganize because they didn't understand why the attacks weren't anticipated and prevented. They added new layers of bureaucracy and management, but in the end, predictably, the system still misses small indicators out of the millions they have to deal with all the time.
If the President were a good leader, he would have taken responsibility for the failure of his government to identify and act on this threat. Then he would have worked internally to fix any weaknesses in the intelligence system and possibly fire anyone who was clearly responsible for failure at critical points. He may still do some of this, but we'll be able to judge how serious (and competent) he is by whether he forms a committee or commission to publicly find fault and recommend solutions. That's the politician's way, and it's intended primarily to deflect responsibility and present the image of action.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - pablo
yawn
2 - Glenn Contrarian
Colonel - After hearing the chorus of right-wing pundits calling for President Obama's head for not personally accepting responsibility for the crotch bomber, I've got a few questions for those right-wing pundits.
WHERE was the chorus of the holier-than-thou Right Wing when Bush 43 NEVER accepted the blame for 9/11? Even after (unlike Obama) Bush was specifically forewarned of the immanent nature of the attack?
WHERE was the righteous indignation of the more-patriotic-than-thou conservatives when Bush 43 didn't even mention the shoe bomber until NINE days after that particular failed attack? Especially since the shoe bomber's attempt came, what, four months after 9/11?
Your article is a wonderful example of something I've pointed out several times - that I can think of very, very few examples of accusations against Democrats by the Right Wing where Republican politicians are not guilty of the very same thing to a significantly greater degree.
This is known as hypocrisy...and every single rightie who makes such rabid accusations against someone on the Left for doing something wrong, but who does NOT make the same accusations with equally rabid language against those on the Right who committed worse is a hypocrite.
Perhaps you used the same accusatory language against Bush. I certainly wouldn't know, and for that reason I will not accuse you of anything.
But I will tell you this: your opinion needs to be put in an historical context. There are very, very few presidents who ever accepted responsibility for anything that went wrong. Neither Reagan nor Bush 41 ever accepted responsibility for Iran-Contra. Nixon never accepted responsibility for Watergate. Neither LBJ nor Kennedy accepted responsibility for Vietnam. Hoover never owned up to the Depression. Wilson never owned up to his stubborn ineptitude in his total lack of response to the 1918 H1N1 outbreak that killed nearly a million Americans (he never, ever mentioned it in public).
Sure, Truman said "The buck stops here!" But did he accept responsibility for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg?
Frankly, I can't think of a single American president who hasn't dodged the blame for something bad...and that begs the question of why? Yes, the president is the military commander-in-chief who is supposed to set the example for the those of us who serve(d) with honor - but the president isn't a purely military figure, is he?
No, he isn't. He is by definition not just a politician, but the most powerful politician in the country and possibly the planet. This means that the example he sets might be very necessary to the political realities of the day as they apply to the best interests of the nation...and in such cases his first priority may not be satisfying the senses of military decorum that are peculiar to retired military such as you and I.
Taken in an historical context, and compared against not only the successes but also the failures of his predecessors, and considering the charlie-fox that he was handed a year ago this coming 1/20, President Obama is doing quite well indeed. I'd say cut him some slack and please, please hold the conservatives to the same standard that they demand of the Democrats.
3 - Ruvy
Glenn, the Obamaman. All you ever do is defend this overeducated, overpaid lying piece of trash from Chicago's Shit Row - the same place that produced Blagojevich and Rahm. And the same city, I might add that made Al Capone, the mobster, killer and corrupter of the Middle West, famous.
Bush was another overpaid not-so-educated failure from Texass - but at least he pretended to do something - and managed to get 8,000 Americans (5,000 casualties overseas and 3,000 dead from a terrorist attack) killed in the process. I won't defend that stupid monkey. But you shouldn't defend the lazy monkey in the White House today.
Glenn Obamaman - yup, title fits you to a "t".
4 - Tom Carter
Glenn, I don't disagree with you that few politicians are good leaders, and I don't defend Bush in this regard. But you need to get over it where Bush is concerned -- he's history, and his failures as a leader don't excuse or mitigate Obama's.
It would seem that your ideology demands that you label as a right-winger anyone who criticizes President Obama. The fact is, I want him to succeed because that means success for the country. However, his lack of executive experience and leadership skills is becoming more and more evident. Standing before the country and trying to deflect blame for failure onto those who work for him is just the latest example.
5 - zingzing
ruvy: "this overeducated, overpaid"
first, do you know how much presidents are paid? maybe you're making a point... but maybe you aren't.
second, what's wrong with education? unless one defers life and becomes a professional student, i'm not sure how it's even possible to be "overeducated."
where did this anti-smart shit come from anyway?
6 - Baronius
Tom - Good article. I liked your last one too, even if I didn't agree with all of it.
I agree that the president cannot scapegoat. Still, leadership does require setting standards and holding people responsible, and Secretary Napolitano failed both in the day-to-day performance of her job and in her public declaration that the system worked. At what point does it become necessary to reprimand in public?
7 - roger nowosielski
Actually, a fairly balanced article, Glenn - not much there to take objection to when it comes to the concept of leadership.
The latter part starting with page two is another story, but you, being an ex-Navy man, might well agree with with Tom's characterization.
8 - Glenn Contrarian
Tom -
FYI, I do disagree with several things that Obama's done - but the matters on which I disagree with him are not part of the right wing's attacks on him. I tend to stand not so much with the Democrats, but with the progressives - we're further left than most Democrats, and most of us are disappointed in how he's (1) caved to the health care industry, (2) given too much attention to the Republicans on the health care debate when they demand that their ideas be included on bills that they refuse to support anyway, (3) refused to prosecute those who ordered torture, (4) has not reinstated the regulations that protected our economy from the end of the Depression to the beginning of the Bush 43 debacle...
...no, I am NOT an Obamaphile. But the matters where I've defended him have been without exception right-wing attacks that are ignorant of history, American tradition, international law, and simple common sense. If you post an article attacking Obama on one of the above issues, I'll agree with you. But if you post an article that I feel contains the errors that I've enumerated, then I must defend him.
And it's not just Obama I've defended. I've also defended Reagan on BC because I feel that he deserves the credit for winning the Cold War and thus deserves to be known as one of our greatest five presidents. If you or anyone else here posts inaccuracies against Bush 43, I'll defend Bush 43. If inaccuracies are posted even against Rove, Sun Myung Moon, Alberto Gonzales, or Jeffrey Dahmer, I'll defend them.
Why? I strive for FACT. Give me the FACTS, for I decide what I believe according to fact, and I refuse to allow what I want to believe to determine those facts.
9 - roger nowosielski
Glenn,
It's part of the progressive mindset to subscribe to certain beliefs/ideals/values. That's what makes a progressive.
You haven't arrived at this position by facts alone. Your value/belief system was more instrumental.
Facts don't make the world turn, but beliefs do.
10 - Glenn Contrarian
Roger -
And as with other things, you're right. Beliefs (and money) do make the world go round. But I think you must agree that the facts largely support the progressive mindset.
11 - roger nowosielski
Right, Glenn, and I don't deny your point and your context. But even so, friend, can't you see how facts can be twisted - interpreted and misinterpreted - to fit the person's belief/value system?
Just think. Even in science, facts in and of themselves are useless unless they're stringed along to fit a theory.
It's a theory or a view of the world - be it in the realm of natural or social sciences - which give sense to "the facts." In the absence of that, facts are meaningless.
12 - Dr Dreadful
'The Obama Administration, with strong support from the media, has attempted to de-emphasize the fact that we are at war.'
It must be the numerous occasions on which President Obama has referred to it as a war which led you to that conclusion.
'But instead of treating him like the enemy combatant he is, he was arrested, given all the rights of a U.S. citizen, and promptly "lawyered-up."'
Terrorists are common criminals, not combatants. Calling and handling them as such gives them validation they do not deserve.
'Instead of interrogating him like a prisoner of war, all we can hope to do is make a deal with him for a lighter sentence if he'll give us information that might help prevent a future attack.'
Sure, because one terrorist getting off with a light sentence is far more dangerous than twenty terrorists taken out of play thanks to his information.
13 - Matthew T. Sussman
If Obama's the president and he cannot assign blame, then everything is his fault.
So THAT'S why Bush ruined everything!
14 - Dr Dreadful
Oh, come on, Matt, that's not fair. You know perfectly well that Bush was too dumb to ruin anything. It was Cheney.
15 - roger nowosielski
Good logic, ElB.
Dreadful - I like your link. But I'm still inclined to think that characterizing our engagement with terrorism as war - as we usually understand the notion - is a willful mischaracterization.
The very fact that we have a difficulty properly classifying "the enemy" - are they POW or just "enemy combatants," a rather new term - is one example I can think of.
16 - roger nowosielski
That's right. Let's lay the blame where the blame properly belongs. Don't forget Karl Rove, though, and Rumsfeld, the real brains behind the Bush administration.
You've still got to give him credit for picking the right advisors. At least he knew he wasn't smart enough to run the ship of state. And that's a plus.
17 - Dr Dreadful
The very fact that we have a difficulty properly classifying "the enemy" - are they POW or just "enemy combatants," a rather new term - is one example I can think of.
You've put your finger on one of the most interesting facets of the 'War on Terror', Rog. The previous Administration didn't want to try captured terrorists in civilian courts because they were afraid they'd hide behind their civil rights, so they declared them not to be civilians. The snag there was that if you're not a civilian you're military, and military prisoners also have rights under the Geneva Conventions.
So this new term was invented. The inescapable conclusion is that Uncle George... er, I mean Sam... didn't want these captives to have any rights.
18 - Baronius
Or, Dread, the terrorists didn't fit any traditional categories.
19 - roger nowosielski
Which is precisely the point, Baronius. Which, if you take it to its logical conclusion, "War on Terror" is not war in the usual sense.
It's a misnomer, just like "War on Drugs" is.
I wonder why.
20 - Glenn Contrarian
You're absolutely right, Doc. By the conservatives' 'logic', we should have treated Timothy McVeigh as a stateless person.
Problem is, when we go down the road of declaring that certain people are not due simple human rights such as fair trials and freedom from torture, then we open the door to much worse abuses down the road.
That's why I will always - always! - believe that we should have prosecuted everyone who approved the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques", because in the 1930's, the National Socialists of Germany also used a program (with the SAME name (in German), IIRC), and the program had more safeguards than the EIT program did under the Bush administration.
In my opinion, failure to prosecute for torture lays a dangerous precedent and keeps the door open for it to happen in the future.
And a quick line to those conservatives who believe that torture is effective, bear in mind that I can 'PROVE' that each and every one of you planned and assisted in the execution of the 9/11 attacks. How can I 'prove' it? Easy. Give me a day to torture each of you with the tools I have down in the garage, and I can promise that each and every one of you will eagerly sign full and detailed confessions.
THAT, sirs, is why torture doesn't give good intel.
21 - El Bicho
"Good logic, ElB."
Thanks, but where did it go?
22 - jamminsue
Opinion without knowledge is ugly (Plato Republic VI 506c)
23 - Baronius
But Roger, just because this isn't a traditional war doesn't mean we get to stop fighting it.
24 - roger nowosielski
But the point is, Paronius, it's a misrepresentation. Or, shall I say, the use of familiar terms to mobilize human and material resource under, again, shall I say? false pretenses.
So why not call a spade a spade, is my question. And if we can't for some unfathomable reason, if only because we're at a loss for words, then perhaps it should be cause enough to re-think the entire enterprise - what in fact are we doing?
Simply stated, it's a matter of (current) practice preceding the evolution of the concept. And, I submit, unless we come up with a clear concept to describe our present engagement, the situation will keep on being murky. As of now, we're venturing into the unknown. And without clear conception of what we're actually doing, there's neither rhyme or reason.
25 - roger nowosielski
#21,
I can't help the action of the BC respondents or the powers that be.