When Platitudes Undermine Real Change: The Case of U.S. President Obama

U.S. President Obama’s 2010 speech at the UN’s annual opening lacked tangible proposals.  For example, he urged progress on the Middle East peace talks, but proffered no proposal.  He said Africa could be prosperous agriculturally, but gave no proposal for how.  He claimed that corruption in governments of developing countries is a problem, but offered no solution.  Pointing to corruption in general diffuses responsibility so talking about it does not shame anyone into making hard choices. Such platitudes belied the president's claim to being an advocate of real change. 

The full essay is at "Platitudes Undermine Real Change."

Putin Likened Protesters to "Weak Birds"

At the conclusion of the 2012 Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Russia, the host president, Vladimir Putin, likened the birds that had not following his motorized glider south to the Russians who did not follow him. “Only the weak ones,” he quipped. “The weak ones didn’t follow me.” Elaborating, he added, “not all of the cranes flew, and the leader, the pilot, has to be blamed because he was too fast in gaining speed and altitude and they were just lagging behind; they couldn’t catch up.” In other words, the Russian protesters had been blaming him for what was in actuality their own weakness—not his. A leader must accept the inevitable misappropriation of blame because being erroneously blamed goes with being a leader.

Putin could not have been entirely objective on the protests against him.      

Source: Democracy Chronicles

The full essay is at "Putin Likened Protestors to Weak Birds."

Source:

David Herszenhorn and Steven Lee Myers, “For Putin, a Flight of Fancy at a Summit Meeting’s Close,” The New York Times, September 10, 2012.

On Nietzsche applied to power in business, see On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management (available at Amazon)

Obama Standing Up to Wall St.: Fact or Fiction?

From the time of the Obama Administration, a major newspaper concluded: “What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these.”

For analysis, see "Obama Standing Up to Wall Street: Fact or Fiction?"

The SEC and the Courts on Wall Street Settlements in 2011

The SEC enforcement staff, including its chief, Robert Khuzami, decided to kick a gift horse in the mouth rather than to “take a lesson” and perhaps come out stronger for it. At issue was the rejection by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of the SEC’s proposed $285 million settlement with Citigroup. In his ruling, Rakoff denounced the penalty as “pocket change” to the bank, which would not even have to admit to any wrongdoing. Investors duped into buying into a $1 billion deal called Class V Funding III had lost $700 million. Betting at the time of issue against half of the assets in the deal, Citigroup did not share knowledge of its hedge with the investors.

The reaction of the SEC staff in Khuzami’s department was simply to “put down their pencils” and wonder how they should go about arranging settlements with financial firms accused of misconduct before and during the financial crisis of 2008. The SEC “doesn’t know what to ask for anymore in the settlements,” one of the people familiar with the Citigroup settlement said. Rather than take the judge’s judgment to heart, Khuzami urged the five-person commission running the SEC to vote to approve an appeal, and they did so. Rather than take the less convenient course of insisting that the banks too big to fail that manipulated their own clients at least admit wrong-doing and reimburse the losses, Khuzami viewed the judge’s ruling as if it were a political obstacle to be obviated by asking an appellate court to ignore it. Given the political muscle that must surely go with Citigroup’s wealth, Khuzami could have been assuming that the bankers would see to it that sufficient pressure would plied on enough appellate judges to make the obstacle easily avoidable. In other words, Khuzami was likely assuming that Rakoff was a fluke, given Citi’s influence—perhaps even in the SEC itself.

The full essay is at "The SEC and the Courts."

Transforming Transformational Leadership: Foundations over Ideology

James Burn’s concept of transformational leadership is in essence a process in which “one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.”[1] This includes a moral commitment to develop followers, especially morally. To Burns, transformational leadership is therefore “an ethical, moral enterprise.”[2] I contend that the term transformation is not inherently ethical, and so it can apply to leadership in an amoral sense. Freed up from the limitations of being viewed primarily or even exclusively as moral, transformation can be seen to apply to leadership in at least two, much more direct—or central—ways than morally: as referring to a leader’s own transformation and to a leader’s vision being transformational. 

Material from this essay has been incorporated in The Essence of Leadership, which is available at Amazon in print and as an ebook.

---

1. James M. Burns, J. Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978): 20.

2. Ken W. Parry and Sarah B. Proctor-Thomson, “Perceived Integrity of Transformational Leaders in Organizational Settings,” Journal of Business Ethics 35, no. 2 (January, 2002): 75.

The American-Iranian Agreement: Moving Mankind Past War

In an epoch of technological development, the relative dearth of political development as concerns international relations has been evident. In June 2015, Pope Francis advocated the establishment of a global institution having governmental sovereignty with which to combat the human contribution to climate change. Such a political development would be significant, given the long-standing default of sovereign nation-states and unions thereof. In July 2015, U.S. President Barak Obama announced an agreement with Iran that would keep that nation-state from develop nuclear weapons in exchange for the removal of economic sanctions. Just three years earlier, war had seemed unavoidable. I submit that Obama’s accomplishment can be thought of as a step toward rendering war itself as obsolete, or at least perceiving it as a primitive means of resolving disputes internationally. More subtly, the feat makes the sheer distance between the premises of war and those of diplomacy transparent. Paradoxically, this insight implies just how difficult a shift from a war-default to one that takes war as obsolete must be.

The full essay is at “The American-Iranian Agreement Obviating War.”

President Obama as Chief Executive? Too Busy Leading and Legislating to Catch the IRS

Has the presidency become too big for one person? This question was salient in the 1970s, as Americans endured Nixon’s Watergate plight, Ford’s frustrations with stagflation, and Carter’s failure to free the American hostages being held in Iran. Meanwhile, none of those presidents were able to take on OPEC (an Arab Oil Cartel). Reagan’s answer was that big government, not an overwhelming office, was the problem. Leaving aside the ideological question of whether the U.S. Government had indeed grown too big (especially relative to the state governments), I contend that occupants of the White House have serially misunderstood the nature of the office. In short, the presidents have allowed their efforts in partisan leadership to crowd out being the chief executive of the executive branch. I suspect that the explanation involves a mix of self-centeredness and simply wanting to shirk the boring stuff for more exciting activities.

 

To preside literally means to stand before. In the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Ben Franklin referred to the proposed office as sitting “in peaceful Council … merely to preside over our civil concerns, and [to] see that our laws are duly executed” (Madison, Notes, p. 55). Referring to the first role, which I take to be that of presiding, Governeur Morris stated on July 19 in convention that the President should be “a firm guardian of the people and of the public interest” (Madison, Notes, p. 324). In this respect, the office of the American presidency is thus geared to looking over the viability of the whole, leaving the partisanship and legislating to the legislative branch. When these two are not left to the Congress (the veto being originally intended to protect the whole rather than for ideological purposes), the credibility of presiding is compromised. Further, the administrative tasks in seeing that “our laws are duly executed” are unduly delegated or simply ignored.

 

In presiding, the president stands for the Union, which includes protecting its system of governance at the macro level and the Union itself, whether from internal dissolution (e.g., Lincoln) or foreign invasion (e.g., FDR). The Presidential leadership that is most credible is at this “high altitude” level. Because the office is not primarily oriented to partisanship on every single issue before the Congress, partisan leadership, such as on a garden-variety issue, is ultimately bad for a president both in terms of credibility and opportunity cost (i.e., the value of tasks closer to the office  that are crowded out).

 

George Washington can be cited to support the thesis that the office is oriented to flying above all but the highest storm clouds. The first president had both Thomas Jefferson and James Hamilton in his cabinet.  Listening to the two men debate, the presider could discern where the national interest lay rather than risk ideological group-think oriented to using the office to push an agenda. President Jackson was oriented to the good of the whole rather than a partisan ideology when he opposed Congress funding roads entirely within a given state (Missouri) and yet sent troops to South Carolina after it passed the Nullification Acts that purported nullified federal laws that hurt the state’s interests. It is not clear if the president was a federalist or an anti-federalist, as his focus was on keeping federalism in balance because that would support the viability of the Union.

 

The results of a 2010 focus group reported by the New York Times indicated that Americans wanted a president who resists the temptation to engage in partisan fighting. They wanted a leader who would stand for things on which most Americans agree, such as that American society should be more civil. Such leadership is oriented to a vision of the whole that transcends partisanship. For example, Barak Obama could have run in 2008 explicitly as a multiracial (rather than black) candidate capable of personifying what America was rapidly becoming: a true melting-pot wherein multiracial persons are seen as the leading wave of the future. Taking a partisan stand on virtually every issue that come out of Congress so as to have as much as possible his way undercuts the credibility of “personification leadership” because people on the other side of a given issue will resist accepting the president as personifying anything involving themselves. In other words, Obama’s political opponents will not buy into any America that he personifies—period.

 

As a general principle, partisanship undercuts presiding. Paradoxically, a president wanting to maximize his influence on every issue winds up undercutting his influence that is most in line with the design and nature of his office and thus effective. In wanting so much to go his way, a president’s ego obstructs his performance on tasks that only he is in a position to accomplish. Lost in the backwash of partisan spit is not only presiding, but also executing the law as the chief executive. It is counterintuitive to conclude that a sort of presidential leadership (i.e., the partisan or ideological variety) is bad because it crowds out the more fitting administrative role. Properly understood, (presiding) leadership applies to the presidency without crowding out the administrative tasks in holding agencies accountable. Sadly, presidents typically try to get involved in as many issues as possible—hence the office appears to have grown too cumbersome for one person.

 

Joe Hagin, George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff, observed while still in office that there “was much less time [under the second Bush] to catch your breath during the day.” A constant juggling of issues—from wars down to cleaning up after hurricane Katrina often taking place all at the same time—had exhausted the White House staff. “There’s only so much bandwidth in the organization,” Hagin admitted.  “Can any single person fully meet the demands of the 21st century presidency?”  Doris Goodwin has argued that the growth in the number of things expected of the president has expanded exponentially since WWII. “The President’s inner circle can become stretched by the constant number of things labeled ‘crises’ that land on his desk.” Just because the media labels some issue as a crisis in order to increase viewership does not mean that the issue measures on the “presiding” scale. Surely the Presidency, being intentionally designed as one person rather than a presidential council, was not initially intended to micromanage every issue in public discourse. The proliferation of news sources has increased the pressure on the President to weigh in on more things. Meanwhile, his administrative tasks are neglected even more.

 

President Obama delivered 57 speeches in October, 2010 alone; he had seven speechwriters at the time. It would be interesting were someone to analyze those speeches to see how many pass muster in terms of presiding rather than being partisan on topical issues. The opportunity costs of getting into every issue in hopes that each one will go the way he wants include not only foregone presiding opportunities but also administrative lapses in executive branch agencies that the chief executive and his immediate staff could have caught and rectified at an early stage.

 

In May 2013, President Obama claimed that he had learned that the IRS had been targeting conservative groups for audits “only with the rest of you.” This statement “drew criticism,” according to the Wall Street Journal, by “focusing attention on his management style and whether he has kept himself sufficiently informed about the agencies under his authority.” I suspect that the president enjoys giving partisan speeches more than overseeing many agencies. In other words, he allowed the time-expansive sort of (partisan) presidential leadership to eclipse his administrative duties. Even the American people tend to view the presidency as a leadership rather than administrative position—so the president gets away with trying to get as much as possible to come out his way, politically.

 

The problem can be viewed as one of self-discipline. While in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Obama did not enjoy the committee hearings, but attending them was part of his job. Whereas in the Senate his leader, Harry Reid, could hold him to task on the monotonous parts of the job, no such authority in the White House exists over a president. To do more administratively as chief executive of the executive branch agencies, Obama would have had to rely on his own self-discipline, which appears to be in short supply. In regard to the partisanship in the IRS, it could be asked why neither the president nor his White House staff had caught the problem in their administrative capacity as the conservative groups were being targeted. Perhaps the president had been too busy giving campaign speeches or negotiating with Republican legislators on legislative proposals.

Sources:

Daniel Stone, “Hail to the Chiefs,” Newsweek, November 22, 2010, pp. 30-33.

Matt Bai, “Voter Disgust Isn’t Only About Issues,” The New York Times, October 6, 2010.

Peter Nicholas, “Obama’s Counsel Was Told of IRS Audit Findings Weeks Ago,” The Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2013.

James Madison, Notes in the Federal Convention of 1787. New York: Norton, 1987.

 

 

 

Moody’s: Statist France Lagging in the E.U.

Bashing the French in a major article on their lack of business competitiveness, the Economist was the target of la colère en Paris in November 2012. Just after the magazine’s warning that France could be the next danger-zone for the euro due to relatively high labor costs and unemployment, Moody’s cut the state’s rating to Aa1 from Aaa and kept a negative outlook on the rating. Moody’s cited the state’s economic weakness and the risks to the finances of the state government “posed by” France’s “persistent structural economic challenges.” In this way, Moody’s analysis dovetails with that of the Economist. Both pointed to a sort of impotence in French industrial policy. Moody’s decision excluded factors from the broader debt crisis in the E.U., focusing instead on the French government’s continued “reliance on borrowing to finance generous social-welfare programs” even as businesses in the state were laying-off employees. In other words, Francois Hollande had not gone far enough in his policies to make a dent in the state’s deficit as well as the downward trajectory of French competitiveness in the E.U. Meanwhile, deteriorating economic conditions in the E.U. were effectively closing the window of opportunity on even a one-party government being able to enact substantive reform. I contend that the gap between what the Socialist party could do, given its absolute majority in the legislature, and what it was actually doing contributed to the criticism.

Changes in real GDP in the state of France. A general downward trend-line is apparent.     
Source: World Bank

The full essay is in Essays on the E.U. Political Economy, available at Amazon. 

Barroso's State of the Union: Is the E.U. a Political Union?

On September 12, 2012, President Barroso delivered his State of the Union Address. His depiction of the E.U. itself can be regarded as blurry, and his notion of "political union" as being misplaced as something somehow not yet extant. Even so, he does manage to accurately characterize the epoch at the time in terms of the Union being in its development stage. He correctly labels this stage as decisive for Europe.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.

  President Barroso talking with Angela Merkel of the state of Germany.         NYT

Juggling the Court and the Constitution: Chief Justice Roberts

Charles Krauthammer proffers a pithy summation of the U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice’s majority opinion on Obama’s health-insurance law of 2010: “Law upheld, Supreme Court’s reputation for neutrality maintained. Commerce Clause contained, constitutional principle of enumerated powers reaffirmed.” Translation: the Court is not judicially activist, the 5-4 majority is not down party-lines, and federalism is protected. Essentially, John Roberts was able to dodge some bullets while doing what he needed to get done, philosophically. Turns out the guy is pretty smart after all. More than met the eye may have been behind President Bush’s decision to nominate him to be the Chief Justice.

Beyond judicial skill, the Chief Justice presides at the U.S. Supreme Court. He is thus oriented institutionally (i.e., as per his unique position there) to act in the Court’s institutional interest. In Krauthammer’s words, “Institutionally, he is chief justice and sees himself as uniquely entrusted with the custodianship of the Court’s legitimacy, reputation, and stature.” That is to say, John Roberts as Chief Justice is more than a justice. To put it crassly, he was interested in what the popular press was saying about the Court while it was deliberating, whereas at least one of the other justices (Thomas) made an effort specifically to avoid looking at the press. Roberts was right to have one eye on how the reputation of the Court might be affected, and Thomas was right to have both of his eyes diverted so as not to be improperly swayed by public opinion. This is not to say that Roberts laid himself open to such influence; there is a difference between popular opinion on the law that is “under the knife” and how the Court could suffer in the public square as a result of a ruling. It is perfectly legitimate for the Chief Justice to have one eye on the latter.

The distinction between being the president of the Court—essentially presiding over it as the steward of its long-term viability—and being a “mere” justice on the Court means that the Chief Justice can be expected to be a “different kind of animal” from that of a justice. From the vantage point of the latter, the Chief Justice may look like a politician, and in fact there may be some political considerations involved in safeguarding even a long-term reputation. The mix of politician and judge seems a bit like that of oil and water—only the latter being reckoned by the jurisprud as pure. Hence John Roberts’ behavior probably struck the other justices as odd at best. However, I suspect that the people “in the know” involved in the selection of the Chief Justice had been well-aware that John Roberts was distinct in ways that would differentiate him from the other justices.

 U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts

Roberts had to be both politician and justice in crafting a majority opinion that would both protect the Court and safeguard federalism (or what is left of it, anyway). I suspect that in this dual-role, Roberts had the rare view that perhaps only leaders in Congress and the President get from time to time—namely, that of the big picture, wherein the trees of one’s days give way to the contours of the forest, both constitutionally and historically. From this summit, the United States is seen as if from a distance measured in terms of oceans of time, and “doing the right thing” can take on added importance because the precariousness of the thing awash in a sea of history yet to be made. 

 Crucially, with the perspective comes a recognition that is apart from any pressing ideological, philosophical, political or even judicial interests. The United States is perceived as an entity that is itself in need of protection apart from whatever way the currents of the day happen to be going. This recognition is what really distinguishes presiding from partisanship. The latter is relativized in importance. With the height of the position comes power such as can shift the contours of a nation’s trajectory for decades, yet also at this height is a humbling sense of responsibility. Ironically, those of less power act with much less responsibility and thus are more dangerous. The distinction here can be thought of as that which exists between transformational and transactional leadership, though the typically organizational application of transformational leadership mislabels or belies its true home, which is societal and historic. 

I suspect that in deliberating on the case, John Roberts perceived that he had not only signficant power in terms of a major piece of legislation in deciding which "side" would be the majority, but also the overriding responsibility to protect the Court itself, and indeed the viability of the U.S. system of governance (including the federal institutions and federalism itself). He was in a position institutionally that called him to rise to the occasion in terms of safeguarding the system itself. 

Theoretically speaking, being systemic in its orientation, the presiding function is consistent with  systemic leadership. The broad vision of such leadership transcends the issues and pressures of the day. To be sure, the more immediate strategic factors cannot be totally ignored. In fact, juggling the enlightened leadership vision that is oriented to the presiding function with the more short-term or issue-oriented strategic or political elements is of value in high positions. This composite in turn can be referred to as strategic leadership. Rather than being a fault or evidence of personal frailty, managing this task is quite proper to the office of Chief Justice.

Source:

Charles Krauthammer, “Why RobertsDid it,” National Review Online, June 28, 2012. 

Charismatic Leadership: A Reply

I am particularly taken by the following passage from Edith Luc’s essay on charismatic leadership: “(I)t is risky, almost utopist to wait on manifestations of a charismatic leader believed to be of unique and exceptional nature, and able to mobilize everybody at the same time.”[1] I am reminded of the emphasis that American corporations place on the CEO position and the U.S. Government places on the U.S. President. The focus on one person, rather than a council, presumes that certain individuals are so unique and exceptional that perhaps even human nature itself is surmounted. In other words, the theory behind charismatic leadership may imply such extraordinary differences within human nature that some people are essentially super-human, and thus subject to hero-worship.

The full essay is at "Charismatic Leadership: A Reply."

1. Edith Luc, “Charismatic Leadership: Between Fact and Fiction”

Presiding over a Debt Precipice: President Obama of the U.S.

In the context of a rapidly approaching deadline on increasing the ceiling on U.S. Government debt, Barak Obama found himself rebuffing pressure from anti-tax “Tea Party” Republicans in the U.S. House while needing enough non-partisan credibility for his warning of an impending economic catastrophe to be believed by the citizenry and Congress. That is to say, Obama’s failure to stand back as the Democrats and Republicans in Congress duked it out on spending cuts and tax increases mitigated his stature or credibility as Presider in Chief. An editorial in the New York Times refers to this role of the president as "the utimate guardian of the constitutional order."[1] To preside is to be oriented to the viability of the whole. This means stepping in when the system itself is at risk. Partisan involvement compromises the ability to function in a failsafe capacity, as the "ultimate guardian."

The full essay is at "Presiding over a Debt Precipice."

1, Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule, "Obama Should Raise the Debt Ceiling on His Own," New York Times (July 22, 2011).