Grading Our MBA President By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Sunday 09 April 2006
There is a consensus among CEOs and business school professors that there are just short of a dozen indispensable characteristics that are essential for an effective chief executive. Since the current chief executive of America Inc. is the first to hold a Masters degree in Business Administration, how does George W. Bush stack up?
What are these basic tenets? And how's our president doing?
1. Have a coherent vision for your organization's future. When he ran for President in 2000, the cornerstones of George W. Bush's vision for America were a more competitive but more compassionate market economy, more "ownership" of more things by more people, a better-educated, healthier, more self-reliant and more ethical population that believed in the power of religious faith and acted accordingly, all working together under a smaller, more fiscally responsible government dedicated to maintaining a leadership role in the world. By example, America would continue to be the light at the end of the tunnel for the oppressed, the punished, the persecuted.
It was not until after the attacks of 9/11 that we heard anything about the president's mission to "spread democracy" throughout the world.
GWB promised to be a "uniter." Yet today, six years on, the US is more sharply divided about more things than at any time since our post-Civil War history.
As globalization has changed patterns of production and consumption, we are less, not more, competitive on the world stage. It may be only natural for business to outsource jobs that can be performed more cost-effectively elsewhere, but our economy has been unable to replace the jobs it has lost with higher-skilled and better-paying ones. A substantial proportion of our higher-skilled workers - engineers, scientists, information technologists - come from other countries as visitors or immigrants. The President's "No Child Left Behind" initiative was a positive start, but it has been woefully under-funded. Every international test shows us lagging far behind other industrialized countries in the skills we need to fill the jobs of the future - principally science and mathematics. More than 40 million people are without health care, millions of others continue to live below the poverty line, and the gap between "haves" and "have-nots" has become a chasm.
More:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040906Z.shtml