After the 2000 election the press noted that President Bush was the nation’s first MBA to hold that office. There could hardly be more contrasting management styles than those of George W. Bush and his predecessor, Bill Clinton. That difference goes a long way toward explaining the President’s low public approval rating.
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In real life, of course, no successful corporate CEO can afford to ignore his constituencies: his company’s customers, his board of directors, and his stockholders. But there are significant differences between corporate and political leadership.
President Truman, about to hand over the office to newly-elected, former General of the Armies Dwight Eisenhower, is supposed to have said, “Poor Ike. When he gets into the oval office, he’ll issue orders, and nothing will happen.” While the military officer has a higher degree of absolute authority, business executives aren’t too far behind. If a subordinate refuses to follow a business plan, the executive can fire him.
In contrast, no matter how wise his policies may be, a President has little power beyond his ability to influence public and Congressional opinion to gain backing for them.
Unlike corporate divisional executives who have come up through the ranks and have surrounded themselves with loyal lieutenants, newly-appointed cabinet heads seldom get their arms around their mammoth bureaucracies in a four-year term, and they have almost no staff loyalty to count upon. In President Bush’s case, some CIA and State Department staffers, significantly tilted toward liberalism, notoriously sabotaged his plans with passive resistance and skillfully timed leaks to the press and opposition politicians.
Presidents Bush and Clinton reflect the stereotypes: one the aloof MBA-CEO focusing upon effective national policies, the other the glad-hander ever courting public approval.
Clinton seemed to be, as Democrats and Republicans alike observed, continually campaigning for office, always on the hustings in front of TV cameras. One of his most obvious political gifts was projecting empathy for people in whatever misfortune.
At the same time, it’s safe to say that President Clinton never pursued any policy course without first measuring its effect in votes, the public welfare coming in second. He chose, for example, to ignore the impending disaster of mandated entitlements under Social Security and Medicare and push instead for compounding the problem with socialized medicine
When the Monica Lewinsky scandal was about to break, Clinton’s first reaction was to have Dick Morris take a poll to gauge public reaction. Getting the bad news from Morris, the President decided to lie to the public.
President Clinton was justly criticized for conducting the nation’s foreign policy as if it were little more than an extension of domestic politics. In his journey to black Africa, a typical example, he apologized for America’s ‘racist’ history, but did nothing of substance to halt the concurrent genocidal slaughter by black tribal leaders. His aim appeared, rather, to have been to stroke the feathers of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the NAACP.
While President Bush is a folksy guy who connects with the average voter, he pays little attention to the media, and his public speeches seldom get quoted beyond his endless affirmations that we won’t turn and run from Al Queda. In diametric contrast to President Clinton, Bush holds few press conferences and seems to be focused on pursuing his plans relentlessly, ignoring the press’s slings and arrows in confidence that what he advocates will be in the nation’s best long-term interests. His alter-egos, Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove, both project images of aloof policy calculation in relative isolation from day-to-day public opinion.
Right or wrong, all three are repeatedly caught flat-footed by Democratic maneuvers and public relations attacks. The fruit of the President’s management style is his low voter-approval-poll ratings.
With the exceptions of Teddy Roosevelt (1901-1908) and Woodrow Wilson (1913-1920), presidents before Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 had been relatively private figures who concentrated upon being party leaders and executing the laws of the land. Beginning with FDR, presidents became larger-than-life personalities who cultivated the image of a demigod who personally runs the nation’s economy and is responsible for business prosperity, new jobs, personal income, and foreign policy success.
Nurturing that image requires good press relations and a PR staff who can claim credit in the President’s behalf for every beneficial event and deflect blame for every disaster. Unlike Ronald Reagan, President Bush manifestly has neither good press relations, nor a skillful PR staff.
To the consternation of Republican loyalists, the President and Karl Rove seem to go into PR hibernation between elections, emerging only at the last moment to edge out his liberal opponent. The 2002 and 2004 elections validated this methodology, but clearly it’s failing at the moment. For good reason, Republicans are nervous approaching upcoming gubernatorial and Congressional elections.
Karl Rove may pull another rabbit out of his hat, but meanwhile the President urgently needs public understanding and backing for his domestic and foreign policies. Otherwise, desertions even by Republicans in Congress will compel him to repeat the disastrous retreat from Vietnam.
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