Fearmongering

This morning produces another great article to digest. This time in the Washington Post:Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar – It’s Our Cage, Too – washingtonpost.com

I don’t need to add too much to this one because the authors hit their main point well: the role of leadership is not to exacerbate fear and uncertainty, it is to ameliorate it. Leaders do not go around talking endlessly about the terrible times ahead they talk about how great it will all be when these difficulties are behind us.

They motivate not enervate.

Bush, being the weakling bureaucrat spoiled brat lightweight pea brain that he is, would not understand that. We cannot expect him to understand that. But we can expect him to understand our annoyance and frustration when his actions [or lack of them] are clearly wrong. That’s another attribute of leadership: true leaders have the courage to change course when their original plan doesn’t work, and we have the high expectation that they will.

Oh well. As I said in my other post today we live in a paradoxical world: everyone studies and wants to be a leader [just look at all those books on the subject!], but it seems to have no effect. The people at the top in America, in all walks of life, seem to be the most inept, lacking, and least talented group possible.

No wonder they don’t understand what the authors of the WaPo article are saying: if our leaders are fearful cowards with no moral compass, how can we expect them to lead?

We need to hire new leaders.