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Presidents of the United States can only make decisions based on the
information they are getting from the people and other sources that are
available to them. Different Presidents obtain that data flow in
different ways. This is particularly important because the events we
are dealing with are so much more crucial than other Presidents may be
dealing with. Iraq, North Korea, high gasoline prices, competitive
position versus China, long-term deficits are all huge problems that
must be solved one way or another.
President Kennedy had an open door policy. He functioned as his own
chief of staff, a center of the spokes strategy if you will. It was
highly successful. Unlike this President, Kennedy asked incisive
questions, and followed up with more incisive questions. JFK developed
his decision making skills very quickly. He was not like this on day
one, but he certainly was at the top of his game by year two of his
Administration. In year one, Kennedy learned not to trust the CIA, or
the military. Both organizations had failed him at the Bay of Pigs in
Cuba.
When JFK came into office, he was presented with a CIA plan created
during the Eisenhower Administration to land 1500 expatriate Cubans in
Cuba to unseat Fidel Castro. The CIA pushed the plan hard, and the
military sat it out when it came time to speak. The disastrous invasion
which took place in April 1961, four months after the inauguration was
a wakeup call for JFK. To his dying days, JFK said, “I asked the wrong
questions.”
He said that if he had it to do over, he would have told the Joint
Chiefs, “I want to make this an American operation, forget the 1500
Cubans, let’s do it with our military. How many Marines do we have to
send in to do this right?” The answer the Joint Chiefs would have given
was 250,000 marines. JFK had he known this would have immediately
cancelled the invasion. He would have said to himself how can 1500
poorly trained Cubans do the job that we would need 250,000 Marines to
do? The president picked up ten years of experience in those first few
months.
The next major tool we can learn from JFK is the use of an executive
committee (ExComm) in times of national crisis. When the Cuban Missile
Crisis took place, JFK did not round up the usual suspects to deal with
the crisis. He brought together the best minds he knew, put them in a
room and let them deal with the crisis alone. He would periodically
enter the room, find out what was going on, and leave again. He knew
that people react differently when the President is in the room. His
presence completely jaded the conversation and advice that would come
out of such a meeting.
This brings us to President Bush. I do not know if you have ever been
in the Oval Office or at a meeting with a sitting President of the
United States. Let me tell you what it’s like. Everybody speaks with a
soft voice in his presence. It’s like they are whispering. Grown men
who command corporations with hundreds of thousands of employees turn
to mush in his presence. It doesn’t matter who the President is, the
reaction is always the same. It’s cultural; we are brought up to
respect the office and the sacredness of the office. After all, this is
the office that George Washington held, and Thomas Jefferson, Abraham
Lincoln, both Roosevelt’s, Teddy, and Franklin. Those thoughts and
heritages never leave your mind when you are in the room with that man
regardless of who he is.
Now let’s take a look at President Bush. Contrary to some people’s
thoughts this is not a dumb man. He has degrees from both Yale, and
Harvard Business. A lot was handed to him in life, but he also knew how
to play a pretty good hand. He has to his detriment in my opinion
surrounded himself with arrogant, ideological, one-dimensional minds
with limited capacity for growth.
Dick Cheney is brilliant. He is also arrogant, secretive, and
ideological. Cheney has hurt this President by not growing his own
thinking over the last six years. The way he thought in the early
1990’s, is the same way he is thinking today. The VP’s secretiveness as
opposed to openness has cost the President dearly in our need to
safeguard the people’s constitutional rights regarding privacy.
Donald Rumsfeld is the worst Secretary of Defense since Robert
McNamara. Both McNamara and Rumsfeld seem to be almost identical in
their arrogance. He is sad to watch Rumsfeld repeat the same pattern of
arrogance that caused McNamara to lead this country down the path of
suicide during the Viet Nam debacle. Rumsfeld inability to entertain
new ideas is costing us dearly in Iraq. His bullying of the generals
who are charged with the responsibility to wage the war is inexcusable,
and history will not treat this man kindly.
Now what do you think happens when the President has men like Cheney
and Rumsfeld around him? The problem is that everybody else is speaking
in that low voice, afraid to utter what they perceive is the truth to
the President. This would all be okay except the President hasn’t
figured out the game yet. He doesn’t understand how to get the
information he needs to make good, solid decisions that WORK.
In his press conference today, the President said that “I feel
confident when General Casey (4 star general-Vice Chief of Staff-US
Army, and Commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq) tells me what’s on
his mind.” General Casey could never tell the President what’s on his
mind, and that’s the problem with this whole Administration. The
President is not getting the information he needs to deal with the
problem whatever it might be.
In being spoon fed the equivalent of ideological dogma, the President
is finding himself in a position that JFK would say is unacceptable.
Even Richard Nixon a very strong conservative thinker had Daniel
Patrick Moynihan a very liberal Harvard Professor right next to him
giving the President the other side of the story. If Mr. Bush is to
succeed in the remaining two years of this Presidency, he has to start
hearing the other side of the story. I do not have much hope that this
is going to happen, and our biggest problem which is the quagmire in
Iraq will continue until new leadership is elected with the mandate to
change. Of course the ideologues will say, we should have stayed the
course. History will show them wrong.
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