Leadership

I'm not the biggest Kennedy fan out there. I think we tend to deify both the slain brothers, basing our assessment of them on their potential, not their accomplishments.

But both of those men knew how to lead.

JFK's 'man on the moon' speech is one of the most inspiring ever. He might not have been there to see it, but his choices and his leadership are what gave us the national will to get there, at a time that few remember now, when the Soviet Union was dominant in space.

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And another, perhaps more poignant example, when Robert Kennedy spoke to an african american gathering on the night of Martin Luthor King's death. There were riots in 100 cities that night, and some black communities took decades to recover. But RFK saved lives in Indianopolis by making that speech.

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Good policies make good leadership, not good speeches.

Actually it takes both - good policies and the ability to communicate them effectively.

On that basis JFK was a failure. IMHO.

Only good policies make good speeches. A moving speech that moves people to do the wrong thing is not a good speech.

And I suppose each of you considers yourself qualified to opine on "good policies."




As to "leadership," the best policies in the world are meaningless if you can't sell them to a reluctant public.

An exceptional leader needs the courage of convictions (arrogance?) and a slick enough tongue to persuade others (sometimes the euphemism "personality" is used, e.g. Bill or JFK).

Even if "good policies" are completely different to what I or Packard would like, the point still stands.

Adolph Hitler was one of the best orators in history.

This is where Bush failed on a number of accounts - the failure or unwillingness to communicate the policies effectively.

Yeah, but JFK started Viet nam and lost a lot more lives than the current president. What was a purpose for going in there?

Sometimes the terms style and substance are used.

Defeating communism.

We needed to defeat communism...why?

I mean, its not like its a threat.

Because commies might play with dominos or something.

?

Behold the immense contradiction underlying right-wing apologism.

I apologize for henry.

actually the goalwasn't to defeat communism - it was containment.

Arguably the same thing.

Because at the time, there were numerous Soviet-backed revolutions and this one looked like it was going to fall.

The goal was to wreck Vietnam in order to prevent what was called "the threat of a good example" - a country demonstrating a succesful model of development other than the proscribed US one and outside the US sphere of influence.

The same principle underpins much of American foreign policy.

An argument could be made, true. The Cold War, however, IMHO was the first global scale seige war. By that I mean the side that had the greatest access to resources was going to win. Thus containment to limit the Soviet's resources and the arms race to make them use what resources they had available was a winning combo. One without the other would have been doomed.

It just didn't occur to anyone
that the Vietnamese would be capable
of running their own country.

Now.

But then, we are living 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Then, it was a huge fucking threat.

Ask anybody in Eastern Europe.

Or Western Europe for that matter.

The Vietnamese weren't running their country - the Chinese and Russians were. They were the ones supplying the Commie's with weapons.

Or Southeast Asia or China or Subsaharan Africa or Cuba or Latin America or...

Well, you get the idea.

Supplying weapons does not equate to running the country, which they certainly were not doing.

So of the two policies highlighted, the Space Race and Racial Reconciliation, which is the 'bad policy'?

I don't recall saying that.

They were running the revolutionaries. Destroying peace in the region by supplying them with weapons, money, food, and training. Much as Iran is doing in Iraq today.

Leadership is based on the ability to convince the right people (not necessarily the majority of the people, though that is often the case) to do what they are told, even to believe that that which is not in there best interests, is. Leadersip tends to be dangerous. How many tyrants in history, except those given power by heredity, were poor leaders? None that I can think of offhand. Maybe a couple of popes. Poor leaders don't tend to get a lot of real power, however much they might nominally have.

Now, sometimes good leaders do have good policies, but they are few and far between. I'm not completely sure why that's the case, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that power corrupts. If a person takes power, or is even given it voluntarily, it will corrupt him or her, eventually. Those with strong ability to self-examine and a very solid sense of right and wrong may stave off the corrupting influence for a while, a very few even for the duration of their term in office, if it's short.