Delegation of Responsibility, Trust In Subordinates May Have Hurt Bush
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A06
President Bush has long prided himself for focusing on big goals rather than niggling details and delegating significant responsibility to his aides. But his belated attention to the brutality at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison has revealed vulnerabilities in a management style that had brought him personal and political success.
Bush's aides say the graphic images documenting abuse of detainees took him by surprise. But as they tell it, the president and his staff received many clues over the past year that there might be a problem -- for example, periodic reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross -- and did nothing because they had been assured the Pentagon was on the case.
A variety of presidential advisers and scholars said the White House's failure to recognize the significance of the warnings points to flaws in Bush's approach to governing that also could have contributed to the administration's inadequate planning and inaccurate presentations in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Fred I. Greenstein, a Princeton University politics professor and author of a text on presidential leadership, said Bush "hews to goals, and has the vision thing in spades," but has "an excessive reliance on subordinates" and "doesn't turn over the rock" to find out what might be waiting to bite him.
Bush, the first president with a master's degree in business administration, has taken pride in his approach to management. "I put a lot of faith and trust in my staff," he wrote in his 1999 autobiography, "A Charge to Keep."
more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7869-2004Jun1.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
