The Fatal Flaw of Bush's "Leadership" Campaign

[lazarus]

Bush's reelection campaign is focused on his "leadership". His "leadership" in the War on Terror, his "leadership" on 9/11 and the days immediately after. Leadership, leadership, leadership.

I don't know how many of you have been in the military, but I was. Granted, I only did one enlistment, but that was enough to learn some lessons. My wife (Haele) is a retired Navy Chief, plenty to learn a LOT of lessons; she and I had the same epiphany last night, watching Stephen Hadley talk about Bush's leadership on the War on Terror:

In the military, when you can't manage to come up with anything specific to say about someone, any actual accomplishments that someone has made, but you still want to give them a good write-up, you talk a lot about their "leadership": "This sailor demonstrated a great deal of leadership during the period in question." That's standard write-up talk for, "This sailor didn't do a damned thing, but I don't want to say it."

Leadership is an easy thing to talk about, because you don't have to talk about specifics. You don't have to mention jobs, just leadership on the economy; you don't have to mention actual terrorist acts prevented (or not, see: Madrid), just leadership on terrorism.

You don't have to show what you did. You don't have to have a record. You can just say you showed leadership. That's as fuzzy as it gets.

And it's a sign of incredible weakness. The Bush people are admitting they have no record to run on, in the War on Terror, foreign policy, or any other area they use "leadership" as a primary focus of the campaign. It's up to us to exploit it, by pointing out the lack of a record, by asking exactly what Bush has done that qualifies as "leadership."

Clarke started last night by sneeringly referring to Bush's "nice speech" a week after 9/11. Let's keep it up.



(edited for formatting and one spelling error)

[RobertSeattle]

1. Good points

I also recall Bill Maher's observation that basically said "Any A-hole could have pointed to Afghanistan after 9/11 and said 'Invade'".
That's not leadership. Leadership was the military commanders would had to execute the Afghan mission, from 4 star general down to the corporal.

[grannylib]

2. I have been harping on this one ever since 9/11: what, specifically, did

Chimpy do after 9/11 that showed true leadership?
Answer: Not a fucking thing. ANY president would have gone to the site, had a little photo op, and made a tough-sounding speech. Wow.
Most presidents would probably have shown up sooner than four days later...and would have gone after those responsible (what a concept, eh??)
Going to war in a grudge match against the wrong nation was NOT 'leadership' by any stretch of the imagination.

[BOSSHOG]

3. If bush had any leadership skills at all

we would not need an investigation to discover who on his staff committed a felony and outed a CIA operative. He said he wanted his people to cooperate. How sweet. A real leader would have found out who did it and handed that felon over to the justice deparment. They sure are cooperating huh?

[StClone]

4. I like to add

What exactly did Bush do that any other President in the same circumstance wouldn't have done.

EXCEPT INVADE IRAQ!

[RogueTrooper]

5. Bush's strength

Anybody who has spent, even a small amount of time at DU will know that George W. Bush only has a record to run away from. However, a note of caution: George W. Bush has been avoiding responsibility for his own mistakes all his life, and he is very good at it. It is easy to gloat that Bush has no record but maybe he never planned too.

[Dr Fate]

6. Good talking point - "Leadership" can be an ambiguous term...

...that never occurred to me for some reason.

My old boss (retired Army) used to say "...I like Bush, he is providing leadership..." when I asked him why he supported him...

Now I know where he got that from.

The retort is obviously- okay, lets hear specific examples of that "leadership"...

[dave29]

7. True leadership leads to postive results

and Bush has nothing to point to there, except nabbing Saddam - at the low price of less world stability.