“Expect this to play out in thumbsucker columns on whether America is ‘ungovernable.'”
–—Professor Glenn Reynolds, the conservative “Instapundit,” in 2009 commenting on a blog post by Ed Morrissey about growing evidence of President Obama’s deficits in leadership skills and management competence.
I mean, who can do this? It’s impos—oh. Right.
Sure enough, here comes a the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, with an offensive, unethical and false column in the Washington Post titled “It’s virtually impossible to be a successful modern president.”
This is a continuation of the six year strategy of the White House and Democrats to argue the ethical value of accountability out of existence. After all, if a job is impossible, you can’t be blamed for failing at it.
If there is any analyst ill-prepared to make such an analysis, it is a journalist, who in most cases, and definitely in the case of Cilliza, have never led or managed anything. Leadership and management challenges always look overwhelming when an amateur is overwhelmed by them.
I have to rush off to a seminar, so I will let you all dissect Cillizza’s pitiable excuses for the President, and return to the topic when I get back.
Ethics Alarms 
I’ll read the full article in detail and am sure it is pathetic as you describe. I however will agree with the general premise that it is much much harder to be President with greater likelihood of “failure” when we expect much more from Government than we ought to. Our system is designed to maximize the ability of decentralized authorities and individual citizens to handle the affairs of the nation. Our system was not designed for the central national authority to handle EVERYTHING, yet we’ve let collectivism and nationalized progressivism put more and more and more in the scope of the central government. Failures are inevitable.
But, the quantity and quality of Obama’s failures distinctly indicate he has no concept of Presidential leadership.
You shouold read the comments. Here is a comment from nitrat
Great point and concise.
“But, the quantity and quality of Obama’s failures distinctly indicate he has no concept of Presidential leadership.”
Indeed, if the nation is truly ungovernable then the proper changes should be made to return it to a governable state.
I say “proper” changes that would not include converting the presidency to an emperor-like position. Rather, the government should be downsized to a point where it is actually manageable, fewer federal agencies, departments, and regulation, power returned to states, etc…
Democrats are probably missing Bill Clinton.
Or Grover Cleveland.
Glenn generally disdains the conservative label. Libertarian is more accurate. http://www.rightwingnews.com/interviews/an-interview-with-glenn-reynolds-2/ for one example.
On a substantive note, here are the issues I noticed in the article, although it’s not an exhaustive list. Truthfully, I had more issues with the quoted section from Ron Brownstein than his own article,.
1, Ignoring partisanship in Reagan years. Democrats couldn’t exactly claim the mantle of collegiality in those years, especially with the Bork nomination.
2. Implies partisanship was the only reason for Clinton impeachment
3. Implies that a monolithic media is better than a divided media.
4. Suggests that republican resistance to Obama has been constant, ignoring the effects of passing Obamacare. Could be a faulty memory, but up that fight it didn’t
I appreciate the fact that he mentions that Obama has created a number of problems for himself. However, he proceeds to ignore them and focus on supposedly unprecedented partisanship. I would suggest that he hasn’t actually looked at the partisanship of the early 1800’s.
Cillizza has written this piece from the perspective of an employee that goes to work each day, performs his assigned work and goes home that the end of the day. It is obvious that Mr. Cillizza has no comprehension on how to be a successful leader; he/she instill trust, establishes a compelling vision of the future, acknowledges the risks and the challenges, and works hard to ensure the team is successful. The leader asks questions knowing he or she does not hold the ultimate truth. The leader tells the truth whether we like what we hear or not. He or she does not spend time wallowing in the past because what’s done is done and only the future matters. An effective leader knows he must also find those common threads of community among a diverse group stake holders to achieve a common purpose, he does not pit one group against the other to weaken the opposition for he/she is confident in the vision and can communicate a well reasoned justification for an action. Finally, He/she must know how to assess skills and hire technically competent people to help him/her achieve results.
Cilizza bemoans the decline of the bully pulpit as a persuasion means and the splintering of the media and new social media as reasons for the inability of a president to be successful. It is not the medium to blame but the message. The bully pulpit works only when you appeal to common interests. It is not effective, and serves to polarize when it is used to place blame.
It was the new social media that catapulted Obama to rock star status in 2007. He was new, he was exciting, he was the new kid on the block that was an historical figure. What Cillizza misses is that the president wants to play the same old song over and over – he is a one hit wonder.
I suppose Mr. Cillizza longs for the good old days in media when the reporters could control the message it wanted to send; Viet-Nam, Nixon bad, Clinton, Obama good. If diversity is a good thing then why would he bemoan the “splintering” of the media. Doesn’t splintering mean a heterogeneous point of view rather than a culturally dogmatic one?
If polarization was at its zenith when Obama took office that suggests that polarization escalated during the preceding administrations. If Obama’s numbers have fallen since then then he has further alienated or lost the trust of even more people. This was of his doing and not the media or any after effect of a past administration.
Clinton changed course when he sought common ground with Newt Gingrich and House Republicans. The impeachment process had no effect on his desire to shift course. Cillizza tries to rewrite history by suggesting that the impeachment proceeding resulted from some political/governing ideology, it dealt with his lying about his sexually liaison with a young women staffer in the white house. So Clinton’s arch of failure in his second term resulted from his own shortcomings. The budget surplus that occurred was not of his making alone. To paraphrase Obama – he did not build that. The budget surplus occurred as a result of the slowing of government expenditures relative to the tax receipts coming in. Clinton was the beneficiary of a period in American innovation, commercialization, and entrepreneurism that began back in 1980 when Gates, Wozniak, and Jobs set out to bring computers into the homes of all Americans. The budget surplus would not have occurred had it not been for the Internet bubble that burst in 2002.
We don’t need popular presidents we need effective presidents. Many a dictator is popular among the majority that is elevated economically slightly but it can only do so at the expense of the minority that pays the bills. The effective president works to lift all boats.