10 Things Obama Can Learn From Bush
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Barack, Bush, History
Bob Woodward outlines what the incoming administration should do differently.
- Presidents set the tone. Don’t be passive or tolerate virulent divisions.
- The president must insist that everyone speak out loud in front of the others, even — or especially — when there are vehement disagreements.
- A president must do the homework to master the fundamental ideas and concepts behind his policies.
- Presidents need to draw people out and make sure bad news makes it to the Oval Office.
- Presidents need to foster a culture of skepticism and doubt.
- Presidents get contradictory data, and they need a rigorous way to sort it out.
- Presidents must tell the hard truth to the public, even if that means delivering very bad news.
- Righteous motives are not enough for effective policy.
- Presidents must insist on strategic thinking.
- The president should embrace transparency. Some version of the behind-the-scenes story of what happened in his White House will always make it out to the public — and everyone will be better off if that version is as accurate as possible.
I would add to that list, “Don’t talk to the American people like we’re in 2nd grade.”
What advice do you have?
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January 15th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Some of these 10 points are sound (a president must do the homework); others are truisms (righteous motives are not enough for effective policy); and still others are pieties the achievement of which us subject to a full range of subjective and biased views (presidents set the tone).
One overwhelmingly important guiding principal for Presidents that didn’t make the list is: “Be prepared to discipline, downgrade, transfer, coax into retirement, or outright fire high officials who do not suceed. A President cannot conceivably manage directly a small fraction of the policies and operations he approves, even with the best tone, willingness to listen to disagreements, etc. Responsibility for executing weighty matters of diplomacy and war must be accompanied by strong support to success, understanding and encouragement in encountering difficulties, and unsentimental replacements and reshufflings when failure is at hand. Cashiering cabinet officers, generals and others in times of war and great emergencies is often distastely but essential.
One of Bush’s greatest failings — perhaps the greatest — was his “loyalty” to supporters and colleagues and seeming inability before early 1997 to shake things up and hold people accountable. General Casey, for example, who had joined the cottage industry of Bush bashing, should have been relieved long before he moved on to a cushy future. George Tenet at CIA should have been bounced — not immediately in the wake of 9/11, which might have been disruptive when CIA operations had to be revved up, but soon after. And while all the facts are noit known about Gen. Tommy Franks performance in the slow and ineffectual Army response to the order to invade Afghanistan (the military generally and the Army in particular dragged their feet, insisted on doctrinally based approaches when speed, flexibility and resourceful initiative was needed), there should have been a thorough review and perhaps action to quickly replace.
I’m tempted to think that the severe problems that ensued after the taking of Baghdad can be ascribed to the same undue deference to supposedly expert subordinates, Cheney, Rumsfeld and a handful of DoD officials in DC are often pilloried for steerig Bush badly. Perhaps they did; certainly Rumsfeld should have been replcaed in 2004. But the problem of sticking with generals and others across the senior leadrehip — not by any means all ideological “neocons” — was a far bigger factor than most people believe.
January 15th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Failure to shake things up before early 1997?
I’m sure that’s just a very big typo, but I have no point of reference to respond now….that said, you seem to be attempting to absolve W. of all the blame here simply by saying he didn’t bounce his incompetent staff.
You are being too kind. Rather, he was incapable ot recognizing incompetence because he himself was just as ignorent as those around him.
Which brings us back to JG’s “11th” point, but he stated it wrong….how about, BE SMARTER THAN A SECOND GRADER WHEN MAKING DECISIONS, WHICH MEANS ACTUALLY APPLYING SOME CRITICIAL THINKING SKILLS INSTEAD OF GOING WITH YOUR CLEARLY INADEQUATE GUT FEELINGS
January 15th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Sorry, this is an especially egregious typo (I’m having a bad day on that score).
“Failure to shake things up before early 1997″ ahould have been “Failure to shake things up before early 2007″ — that is, after he was presumably shaken by the “thumping” in the 2006 elections.
Rummy was cashiered then, and many of his acolytes followed him. Petreaus was given the Iraq command, prematurely suceeding Gen. Casey in that command. Ryan Croker was appointed US Ambassador to Iraq. By many accounts, Dick Cheney lost a significant part of his policy influence from that time forward. Lots of chnages ensued, not least of which was the forging of a new and different strategy in Iraq.
Far from absolving George Bush of responsibility for his failures, I’m pointing out that the 10-point list is full of truisms, pieties and points of guidance that can only be evaluated subjectively or after we know a great many more facts.
What stands out glaringly in my view is that Bush was loyal to subordinates to a serious fault. That’s hardly holding him blameless.
But it does not mean simply that Bush was “incapable of recognizing incompetence because he himself was just as ignorant as those around him.” In the first place, “those around him” who were failing were not necessarily “incompetent” or “ignorant.” Indeed, many (Dick Cheney being the biggest example) had proved themselves in the past to be quite capable and in many cases successful. So had Gen. Franks and Gen. Casey, and in many respects, Director Tenet.
The point I’m making is that even if a person has done wonders earlier, seems smart and capable, makes impressive proposals and has a host of boosters whose opinion the President values, in war especially, the only true measure of merit is success (check out Gen. McClellan in 1861-62 as a prime example).
A President must be ruthless in insisting on success when lives, a huge fortune, and the nation’s safety and reputation are at stake. All the rest of those useful 10 suggestions might well have been followed, and yet, if Bush had not been willing to ruthlessly to get rid of people whose plans went awry, the rest of that stuff would likely not have mattered much.
The reason is that no President — not Obama either — can possibly know to a a certainty everything that ought to be done to wage a war or challenging diplomatic and intelligence operations. Even if he did, he’d have to rely on others to do the work.
Truman used to say that the hardest thing to discipline yourself to as President was how to cope with this reality: you’d call a bunch of high-level officials into your office, tell them authoritatively to do this or that and then a week or so later, they’d come back and you’d find out that they not only didn’t so what you wanted but the opposite!
No amount of personal Presidential study, listening to all points of view, encouraging debate, demanding long-term strategic plans, or being skeptical will ensure that your subordinates do what you want in the end or succeed at whatever they do. (In fact, Truman hated getting “options” from advisors and having lengthy discussions, all of which he thought only demonstrated that people lacked conviction and were shy of making choices and decisons.)
It is not possible for even an experienced President to be a skilled and experienced general, logician, intelligence expert, lawyer and diplomat on every issue facing the nation. Again, in matters of war especially, high subordinate officials must feel pressured to succeed and afraid of failure.
In my view, a perfect early example of where this principle should have been applied with beneficial effects for all the operations pursued in subsequent years was in early 2002 after the US had run al Qaeda out of Afghanistan without destroying it or capturing bin Laden. Replacing a few people who had top-level responsibility for the decisions that left that operation sort of but not really successful would have made the whole government and military understand that this was not just their personal opportunity to earn promotions. This has been a major war in which not a single general or admiral was relieved for failure, even though the failures have been extensive.
Why wasn’t Bush willing or able to do this? Why didn’t he dump Rumsfeld by late 2004 when Iraq had turned south? Why didn’t he replace Cheney on his ticket in 2004?
I don’t pretend to know but this was his real failure, and the 10 points above don’t get at it.