Leadership: POTUS and the Guv

Leadership: POTUS and the Guv

Ever since a former colleague disparaged President Obama’s “leadership,” I have been pondering the oddity of Mitt Romney’s being sold as a “leader” for working with a Democratic Massachusetts legislature to craft “Romneycare.” I can’t get past how wrong both judgments are.

I am not going to list the many accomplishments of President Obama since he has been in office, except to remind us of his almost Sisyphean labor: to preside over a country whose filibuster-proof minority party made it their business, not to govern well, but to make Barack Obama a one-term President.

Governor Romney’s tenure in Massachusetts was marked by a Democratic majority in the legislature, for sure, but his “bipartisanship” was achieved in a state whose Senator Edward Kennedy had for decades “led” to create universal health care. In other words, Governor Romney “led” a coalition of the already-willing to do what he lately wants so desperately to undo (“on Day One, I will repeal Obamacare”).

What becomes clear with this single example is that Governor Romney “led” a predominantly Democratic group to accomplish what Democrats already wanted to do, and he now wants to “lead” a national group of PLUs to accomplish what they want—to reduce or eliminate the current social programs of government and replace them with new social programs, largely constraints dictated by their particular morality.

I’m thinking leadership is oddly construed if what you lead is a pack of people who already agree with you. Such a pack is not our honorably, creatively, beautifully pluralistic US of A.