Leadership, Management and Discipline

We heard just a snippet of an interview with a retired military person who was asked about what the interviewer called “Obama’s lack of leadership”.




“It's not exactly the lack of leadership alone,” the flag level officer replied. “ He has, apparently, no management skills at all—and therefore we’ll never know about his leadership skills!”



That rang a bell for us because believing we read the Constitution of the United States very carefully many times between ages 14 and 88, our prejudice has always been that those elected to administer— or even to write— the laws of this nation are not automatically “ leaders” when they are elected or appointed.



These people are, initially, servants of the people. They may or may not grow or evolve into a matrix of “leading” with some on-the-job seasoning.



But before the seasoning those charged with the magisterial task of governing a nation of 300 million people must have what we will call (for lack of a better term) Management Skills.



It shouldn’t have taken us 4 1/3 years to find out that Barack Husein Obama has not now and has never had any skills in managing people.



Maybe he learned how to bully, blackmail, extort and strong-arm his way to a conceived “community organization” from his godfather, the communist poet Frank Marshall Davis...or from Chicago socialist Saul Alinsky’s manual.



But he never learned about hierarchical management, which is an absolute necessity in governance.



And there’s no question about where this kind of training is most available and shows up with most eloquence and efficiency.



West Point, Annapolis, Parris Island, Quantico and such like places.

For, the primary factor in superior management skills must  be  DISCIPLINE:  Self Discipline and applies discipline up and down the line.  And right now, the United States isin  the most undisciplined  era of its 235 years of existence as a nation.



Some of you will say that the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania or the Harvard business school might be added to the list that just appeared in the paragraph above from instinct.



But just offhand the only economics graduate that we can remember ever having had a really splendid presidential governance was Ronald Reagan, and his, a bachelors degree in economics, was from a small, almost municipal, college in Illinois. RR did most of the creativity.



So let’s stick with the no-frills rigor of Quantico and Parris Island since there is little likelihood that a president-elect to take out four years for either of the military academies.



But it would not be impossible, between early November and late January for a cadre of politicians headed by the president and vice president to be— yes, IMMERSED in management skills as taught in the Marine Corps’ basic training and officer training regimens.



At least—and I know this is a dream—no chief magistrate or senator, our House Speaker / committee chairman...or Veep... Would be bereft of management principles in a hierarchy.



Admitting that this may be a more unrealizable goal than putting all 435 national legislative stalwarts  at the mercy of Medicare and Social Security, we believe there is great merit here.



At least our servants will have to qualify for a chance at the apothegm “leadership”.