thinking men think, and therefore change their minds

Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal. – Robert Heinlein

Leadership, I frequently say, is about “making good decisions with limited information.” Not perfect decisions. But good decisions. You don’t have a choice in business: move quickly or die. And unlike CEOs on Wall Street, the small business CEO’s worst nightmare is to fail their employees and customers. I am not afraid of risk or failure as an individual, but I do have obligations and those must be met and that requires leadership during trying times.

There are three major factors that make leadership decisions difficult:

1. Speed – you must make a decision and you never have enough information.
2. Pressure – the pressure to make the right call, and make it now, is intense.
3. Commitment – even if only 51% sure about a decision, commit 100%.

I suspect politicians face the same deadly triad when making decisions. And worse than letting their employees and family down, politicians risk being pilloried in the media, dragged through the hot coals of a PR disaster, and destroying the empire! Why anyone would want to be a politician is beyond me.

So it was with some relief this weekend when I read the letter to the editor in the Houston Chronicle by Charles Hamilton of Spring Texas titled “Thinking Men Think.” It was like someone with common sense finally stepped into the room. From his letter:

Regarding “Let’s give Romney time to sort out his positions” (Page B9, Friday), Gail Collins inaccurately notes a presidential nonqualifying trait in Mitt Romney‘s “not giving a fig” about undocumented workers clipping his lawn.

and

Non-objectively, she does not compare Obama’s many flip-flops (e.g., closing Guantanamo) with Mitt’s (e.g., abortion)…

Thinking men think. Man’s judgment of other men’s motives is often flawed.

Politician’s disparage each other to get elected because we the electorate remember bad stuff better. Witness the oft quoted and paraphrased “you get 10 bad reviews from an angry customer versus 1 recommendation from a happy customer.” Witness “if it bleeds it leads.” Witness Perez Hilton, the Drudge Report, etc… WE have trained the media and the politicians to feed us disparaging remarks about each other.

And the worst of those sound-byte-disparagements is she “s/he flip-floped on issue _____.” What does that mean in poli-parlance? It is slang for “the politician changed their position” with an implied “you can’t trust them.”

flip-flopping,” by the media, is consistent with the actions of a rational human being. Feel free to ponder “what” changed. Be it pandering to the left or right. But SOMETHING changed in the politician’s world-view to have them logically take a new position.  The broad definition of flip-flopper can be painted on President Obama as well as on candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. And how does this help move us forward? It doesn’t.

Look, we all benefit from a healthy Presidential Election. Let’s talk about the issues in the primary and in the general election. But if you hear someone say “he is a flip-flopper” the person who is speaking is not thinking with acuity. Don’t we deserve a leader smart enough to move with the cheese?

As Charles’ said – “Thinking men think.” And thank God for that!

(this is a cross post – to comment please comment on the chron.com version here.)

I get why people are so angry

“I get why people are so angry at seeing Christmas commercials and why petitions are starting left and right and why regular, educated, hard-working Americans are taking to the streets to occupy and lend their voices to the movement.

These people are normal. They have kids and dogs and jobs that they’ve held for 17 years. They work in the lowest-paid but highest-required degree social institutions and donate money to social injustice to help other people. They take care of their sick parents. They help other people when they can by sending them to community organizations or by just paying a light bill. They do the best they know how to do. They never think they were going to end up here.

At least I didn’t think I would.”

(source)

1965

“the most important piece of legislation that no one’s ever heard of”

- Simon Rosenberg (source)

The Obama Doctrine – the Monroe Doctrine on Steroids

As I understand it, the Obama Doctrine is (these are my words):

We (America) can preemptively execute people we deem to be a national security threat even in allied countries without notice. In doing so, we accept collateral deaths of unknown people will occur. This targeted execution is done without any form of process beyond Executive approval. And we may or may not notify our ally or Congress before the strike.

Not exactly the Monroe Doctrine. In fact it is an extension of US Foreign Policy far beyond any previous policies. Yet the editors on Wikipedia describe the Obama Doctrine as: (emphasis added by me)

Generally speaking, it is accepted that a central part of such a doctrine would emphasize negotiation and collaboration rather than confrontation and unilateralism in international affairs. This policy has been praised by some as a welcome change from the more interventionist Bush Doctrine.^[1] Critics, such as former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, have described it as overly idealistic and naïve, promoting appeasement of the USA’s enemies.^[2] Others have drawn attention to its radical departure from not only the policies of the Bush administration but many former presidents as well.^[2][3] Meanwhile, additional political pundits have disagreed entirely, accusing Obama of continuing the policies of his predecessor.

Blowing people up from space can hardly be called “emphasizing negotiation and collaboration rather than confrontation.” To be blunt, the Wikipedia entry on the Obama Doctrine is WILDLY wrong. The Wikipedia text above does not in any way match up reality as I see it except for the “continuing the policies of his predecessor” part. Why? Perhaps the aggressive narrative doesn’t work well for the 2012 election. It turns out our current President CAN answer the “call at 3 AM” and he answers it more aggressively than any previous President.

I have made no secret that I have called President Obama “Bush 44″ since he was elected. You keep the same economic and military advisors as your predecessor, you repeat the same bailouts, and (SURPRISE!) your politics and results are identical. There has been no “change.” Which makes the screaming critics look silly. The only thing you could possibly say changed is Obamacare (as the critics call it) which is watered down to be similar to the policy Texas has for Auto Insurance. (Wow, radical departure. Hold me back. I can’t handle the change. And can someone give me $500 for the last uninsured guy who hit one of our family cars please!? I guess he didn’t read the law.)

Don’t get me wrong. As a very proud American I am glad the evil one is dead. I know I am supposed to forgive and everything, but I’m gonna have to let God handle that one as I am incapable of forgiving such a weak and cowardly monster. And I never heard of the guy we got in Yemen, but I have to assume he deserved it based on media reports. (Disclaimer: I also believed and supported the invasion of Iraq at the time. The turning point for me was when General Powell addressed the UN because I trust Powell. Heck, I still wish he would run for President.)

What started this post on the aggressiveness of the Obama Doctrine? On August 29th I posted a link to FB regarding criticism of President Obama that I believe wasn’t Republican or Fox or Tea Party punditry speak but actual legitimate intelligent criticism. My original text associated with the link I posted was:

Many times my conservative friends criticize our President with punditry-speak & incorrect-facts… BUT, here is some legitimate FACT based criticism of true problems with our current President.

In response, one of the comments I received on Facebook from X (you can identify yourself in the comments and I’ll update this post but I did not want to assume it was OK to blog your identity) begins with

Intellectuals have great difficulty understanding what makes our political/economic system work because very little of what makes it tick is cerebral in nature. Obama is a failure as president for reasons that can’t be explained by tearing apart public policy matters and breaking down statistical data. He will not succeed at rebooting our economy because of what’s in his heart – he does not believe our economic system has virtue. He sees capitalism as unfair, harsh and too random in its distribution of power. Further, he has contempt for the kind of people that make our economic system successful (unless they choose to appear to subjugate themselves to him, as Warren Buffet and Jeffrey Imelt have.) Obama not only fails to inspire our captains of industry and aspiring entrepreneurs, he makes them feel fearful and discouraged.

Lots of philosophy there, but perhaps not framed in a historical context or anything close to quantitative. My response (with a few corrections in wording and links added) follows:

I would say at this point my conservative friends agree on that point. What is also interesting is that my progressive friends are also hugely disappointed because they did have “hope.” And that hope has not been realized.

U.S. President James Monroe

I am greatly bothered by the “noise” that prevents looking at larger policy issues with objective eyes. Example: A preemptive military strike in an allied country (without telling them) on the other side of the globe to kill Bin Laden is great news in the US. But wait, you can’t call that part of the:

1. the Monroe Doctrine (keep the Europeans out), or
2. the Roosevelt Corollary (we can intervene in Latin America if their checks bounce) or
3. the Bush Doctrine (preventive war is OK if we think you are a threat like Iraq).

No, this is a new policy that is called “the Obama Doctrine” by the media. And like Roosevelt and Bush, Obama has extended the original Monroe Doctrine on our use of military force.

The challenge is we don’t have an explicitly written “Obama Doctrine.” But from a military perspective, our current President is in fact the most aggressive Presidents we have ever had. Thus when the right calls him weak, when his actions speak otherwise, we prevent educated dialog about the limits of the military aspects of the Obama Doctrine.

Can we drone strike in France a mosque if we know the leader has anti-US beliefs? Technically within the Bush Doctrine that would be allowed, but it would be considered war on France, a nation-state. Not good. Yet, it would fit within the Obama Doctrine from a military perspective based on our relationship and actions in Pakistan.

I’m simply pointing out that the “Obama is weak” narrative pushed by the right is designed for an election campaign. Yet it does NOT agree with the facts and prevents educated dialog about our current foreign policy.

While working on this post I saw this article today by Cheney saying the President should apologize to Bush. In the quote Cheney is referring to the drone strike in Yemen to kill an American Terrorist living abroad. From the CNN article:

“I think it was a very good strike. I think it was justified,” Cheney told CNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union.” But “I’m waiting for the administration to go back and correct something they said two years ago when they criticized us for ‘overreacting’ to the events of 9/11.”

The Obama administration has “clearly … moved in the direction of taking robust action when they feel it is justified,” Cheney said.

OK people, if Dick Cheney is describing President Obama’s administration and policies as “taking robust action” then everyone needs to pause and think about it.

In summary, a few key points to emphasize:

1. The Obama Doctrine is MORE aggressive than the Bush Doctrine. Agree or don’t agree, but let’s at least talk about the Obama Doctrine or ask for a written copy before we go and launch drones over Sweden.
2. The expansion of the Bush Doctrine by the Obama Doctrine suggests to me that in this case the former VP is right. If President Obama is doing not only the same thing but more, he probably should apologize at least privately to W.
3. Republican pundits need to stop the “weak” narrative to describe the current President if they want to have any hope of having a chance in the next election. You can’t use that paint-brush successfully on the guy who killed the devil.

until that day comes, there will be gridlock and dysfunction

“In their new book, “Millennial Momentum,” they explain how the millennial generation (born from 1982 to 2003) will remake America in education, politics, entertainment and every other conceivable endeavor. There will be more compromise, they predict, and more tolerance for different points of view…. But until that day comes, there will be gridlock and dysfunction. And our government will stay broken” – CNN

#agree