Leader Seduction

Friends,

Last week just about EVERYONE got sick of Congress.  Hopefully, this week, they’ll give us some medicine to get over our sickness.  ASIDE from the politics – and I’m biting my partisan tongue – I believe there is a big lesson relevant to our Everyday Leadership.  There is both bipartisan evidence of good leadership . . . and, of course, the lack of it.  Let me start with the followers – us, or U.S., if you will.

David Gregory on Meet the Press yesterday summed us up pretty well in these poll results he put on his screen:

Americans Support:

Balanced budget amendment — 74%
Cut, cap and balance — 66%
Cuts and taxes — 66%

Americans Oppose

Cuts to farm subsidies — 66%
Cuts to pensions/benefits of retired fed workers — 68%
Cut the amount spent on medicaid — 77%
Cut the amount spent on medicare — 87%
Cut the amount spent on social security — 84%

He was moderate in the way he summed it up: “Bottom line is Americans are sending mixed messages.”  Mixed, or MAD messages, as in crazy?  Collectively, we’re in a dream world, asking the impossible.* And we continue to invite not (tough) love but seduction from our elected officials.  Too many tell us what we want, not what we need. The Republicans say they oppose any tax increases, but it’s impossible to maintain defense and social security without such increases.** The Democrats and even the media almost never even use the word “tax,” as if it’s a sin to actually talk about paying for the services we collectively want. Avoiding plane language is the first big compromise of truth.  But this pattern of impossible expectations that lead to seductive leader behavior by so many in congress is not exceptional when it comes to authorized leaders like us.  Instead, it is the norm.

Our kids want good grades and they want to “hang out” all day.  Sometimes it’s hard to consistently tell them you can’t have both. Parishioners want to be seen as “good Christians,” while fiercely judging the Republican, fat person, fat cat, or lesbian, in the next pew. Our players want to be on a winning team, but they’d rather score points than pass. Our second vice presidents want to be first vice presidents, but they’re undermining the very people they would like to one day supervise. Our job is to wake them from illusions not to indulge them in their dreams.  Despite our judging the Congress for the problems we all have (allowed to be) created, some in Washington are performing admirably under brutal circumstances.  Thus:

I am grateful to the President for looking for a “balanced solution” even if my fellow Dems say he gave too much. “Leaders go first.” (Kouzes & Posner)

I’m grateful to Speaker Boehner who’s had to work for a compromise with ideologues in his own party who ran by saying Washington doesn’t work and turned around and ground the government and much of the economy to a total halt.

I’m grateful to Senator Reid and (gosh this is hard to say***) Senator McConnell for staying calm when everyone around them has been raging, and assuring us that they’d get it done.

So, try not to get seduced this week. Leaders don’t just please. They help people face the hard choices and support them in making them.

Keep striving to lead with your best self!

Dan

* As I said, I don’t want to be partisan in this column, but I must point out that the “balanced approach of cuts AND taxes” (call them what they are), which the President and I believe every Democrat is pushing for is actually evident in these poll results, where 66% of Americans believe we need both cuts and taxes to solve the crisis.

** I give credit to some of the purists like Ron Paul.  I don’t agree with the choices he suggests, but I admire him for having the intellectual honesty to admit America doesn’t have the wealth to be all things to all people and to push us to make hard choices.

*** My resistance to Senator McConnell flows from his opening salvo in this term when he said the number one priority was to defeat the President in the next election. In my view the leadership’s primary job over four years is to advance the country, not defeat the president. From the point of his making that statement -which to my awareness he’s never repudiated – casts doubt on his motivation and policy prescriptions. I suspect that downgrading America’s debt would have been laid at the steps of his party’s radical right wing, and I believe — according to his own words – that it was this as much as the good of the country that has led him to work for a compromise at this 11th hour.  (“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” See:  Examiner.com Republican leader says GOP’s number one goal is defeating Obama in 2012 – National Political Buzz | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-national/republican-leader-says-gop-s-number-one-goal-is-defeating-obama-2012#ixzz1TipcRN8g

 

 

 

 

  • Restore Bush era tax cuts. How many are in favor of this? How many $ to lower the deficit are involved? So what if it is only 1/2 of the estimated $1800 Billion the NYT reported? Also, I loved the tape of Dennis Kucinich explaining how the war and congressional support was funneling the wealth of the USA into the hands of the few who benefited from private armies, the defense business and war profiteering. Try not to think of a war profiteer! Try not to think of a patriotic tax payer earning over $1M/year and not paying even 10% in taxes!

  • Why can’t they go on television and ask every American to cotribute $10.00 per family member and if they can afford it $20.00. We contribute to all other disasters with a telethon, why not ask We The People. I would be the first person in line to send them my money, CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME!~The TIP Lady

  • Thank you, Dan. Your words help and resonate with me. I hope I can mirror the same kind of leadership that you’re talking about.

  • Unfortunately, the problem is that we are trying to run an outdated business model for our entitlement programs. As you said last week Dan, concerning Borders, the government is trying to run entitlement programs using an outdated business model. As you so aptly stated last week regarding Borders, if we do not change our business models, say for example regarding Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, we will become bankrupt, ala Borders. Demanding more money to run this outdated and impractical business model will not solve the problem. At some point, the government has to stop spending money it does not have. I realize that you did not appreciate the comment that the goal was to keep President Obama as a onetime President, but if a President, any President, is destroying the financial stability of the country, isn’t limiting his/her destruction a laudable goal?

  • Your column was so timely as usual, and I’m reminded of my thoughts of Congress displaying an unbelievable lack of leadership in an inevitable process of raising the debt ceiling. The partisan bickering gets worse every year & dooms us to gridlock. And responding to Barbara’s comment above about Obama being a 1 term President–it isn’t 2012 yet. The Republican contenders will have enough airtime to bring him down in the campaign. For now it seems the best course of action is to do what’s right for the country.

  • It appears to me that the entire circus show was in the big tent and the resulting outcome is…..business as usual in Washington, DC. No real leadership there…..behind closed doors, it is the status quo, R & D alike, looking out for themselves and their lobbyist influenced handlers.

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