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For Game Change, a non-fictional account of the 2008 US Presidential race, the two political reporters conducted hundreds of interviews and had unusually close access to the campaigns.  They perculate some pretty interesting political morsels. For example, on p.43, the authors write that Hillary Clinton considered Bill’s administration to have been ”a tactical and operational disaster.”  ouch! The book’s overall theme calls attention to the magnitude of the difference between the actual candidates and the images of them that they portrayed through the media.  In reading about what the candidates are like in person, I am particularly struck by their foul mouths and what this intimates concerning their characters.  That we, the voters, are not privy to the candidates’ real personalities, characters and values is of great concern to me because we are basing our decisions at least in part on fabricated image.  In short, we are situated too far removed to pull the lever to discover who is behind the curtain.  The public image can differ radically from the actual person. When Hillary was a US senator from NY, she portrayed herself as bipartisan and self-effacing in the Senate when in fact she was anything but (if the authors are correct).  On the evening of her win in New Hampshire, Hillary remarked privately, “I get really tough when people fuck with me” (p. 190).  Although her public persona comes off as rather stiff, I can’t imagine her using such language on a regular basis.  Referring to Obama to her aides after one of the debates, she said “What an asshole” (p. 145).  We would never know this from how chummy she would be with him as his Secretary of State.  Images can be deceiving.  As still another example, consider John Edwards, who said to Brumberger, one of his aides:  “Why didn’t you come to me like a fucking man and tell me to stop fucking her?” (p. 134).  On the republican side, McCain is “still prone to outbursts of profanity,” but we would never know it (p. 274).  On his first visit  to his campaign headquarters, for instance, he remarked, “Waht the fuck are all these people doing here? … I am not fucking authorizing these fucking hires. Who are these fucking Bush people? Where is the fucking money?” (p. 278).  It’s almost pathological with him, though the guy was a POW and therefore deserves a pass.  Still, it is remarkable how different his real personality is from his public one.  In public, he said, “I’m very happy with the campaign” (p. 285).  It is no wonder we don’t know who our politicans are.  My reaction from all the subterranean crassness is that I’m thankful that I’m not in the political arena with them; they don’t seem like the sort of folk that I would want to associate with. Evidently, they hire like-minded staff.  Harold Ickes of Hillary’s campaign, for example, says of Barak Obama after the Rev. Wright fiasco, “This guy has been sitting in the church for twenty fucking years. If you really want to take him down, let’s take him fucking down” (p. 238).  Quite a different articulation of politics and religion than we the public are used to.  I submit that Ickes’ association of church and “fucking” is revealing as to the man’s character. It is no wonder the real personalities are masked for you and me. There are implications for how our system of government is structured and for its electoral processes.  Even though we the voters can’t be blamed for going on fake images if that is all that is available to us, we are to blame for elongating the election season and expanding popular election in larger and larger electoral districts in which there is more distance between the average voter and the candidates.  The harder we make it to get elected, the more fighting-oriented the remaining applicants will be.  Is fighting prowess really the supervening quality in good governing?  Ironically, we would perhaps get better governance were it easier to get into office.   On the matter of the number of electors per candidate, the delegates in the Constitutional Convention warned that in very large electoral districts the people would not know their candidates as well. We could demand more of our intra-state representatives and less of those in the US Government; we have a better chance of person-to-person contact with the former than the latter, and the latter are too good at playing the image game…too fucking good.

See related article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35836844/ns/business-careers/

Despite several days of overwhelming popular grass-roots protest in Egypt, on January 30, 2011, the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, stopped short of urging the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, to resign.  According to The New York Times, she spoke of "a process that must include a government dialogue with the protesters and “free, fair, and credible” elections, scheduled for September." In the face of overwhelming protests going on in Egypt, the top U.S. diplomat was urging a dialogue through September. It is as though she viewed the current Egyptian president as legitimate in democratic terms, yet she also said: “We have been very clear that we want to see a transition to democracy. . . . And we want to see the kind of steps taken to bring that about. We want to see an orderly transition.”  If a transition to democracy means that the Egyption officials have not hitherto been legitimately elected democratically, then why was Clinton so timid? On February 1, 2011, The New York Times reported that President Obama had sent a message to President Mubarak through Frank Wisner that the Egyptian president not run for reelection in September. According to officials, it "was not a blunt demand for Mr. Mubarak to step aside now, but firm counsel that he should make way for a reform process that would culminate in free and fair elections in September to elect a new Egyptian leader." According to The New York Times, Obama was continuing his balancing act by "resisting calls for Mr. Mubarak to step down, even [while calling] "for an 'orderly transition' to a more politically open Egypt." As a result, it was still  not clear whether the Obama administration favored Mubarak turning over the reins to a transitional government. On February 5th, just days after suggesting that it wanted immediate change, the Obama administration said it would support an “orderly transition” managed by Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman. The New York Times reported that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "said that Mr. Mubarak’s immediate resignation might complicate, rather than clear, Egypt’s path to democracy, given the requirements of Egypt’s Constitution." Not coincidentally, Israeli officials, who have long viewed Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Suleiman as stabilizing influences in a dangerous region, "have made clear to the administration that they support evolution rather than revolution in Egypt." Accordingly, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden urged Vice President Suleiman on February 8th to take specific steps toward democracy. The technocratic turn presupposed the evolution rather than revolution approach, as per the interests of Israel and contrary to that of the Egyptian protesters.

The ambiguity in the Obama administration's "policy" on Egypt bespeaks an underlying lack of clarity in regarding principle as distinct from diplomatic expediency. At the time, the protestors in Egypt saw through the American strategic moves as such and continued to demand Mubarak's immediate resignation; the half-way, or "balanced," measures of convenience were regarded as wan from the standpoint of the protestors' acting on principle. I contend that both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama put short-term tactical advantage above leadership. It should have been obvious that the breakdown of Egptian law and order and the accompanied strikes went beyond a need for "dialogue" and an evolution toward democracy. It was as though a soldier hemorrhaging on the battlefield were being told to relax and be orderly rather than that a tourniquet would be immediately applied.  It is sad, indeed, how bad things would need to get on the ground before the Obama administration would admit that a new government from the top was urgently necessary. In my view, the loss of law and order itself meant that the government had lost its right to govern. The U.S. administration lost this window by letting things "evolve."

If "real change" means anything, it surely involves departing from business as usual in order to lead by principle. Principled leadership entails taking risks. Indeed, tacticians are so cautious in part in order to obviate such risk. That is to say, principled leadership involves the risk that being guided by one's principles can involve short-run costs. As regards Egypt, standing up for the Egyptian protesters by saying that President Mubarak should step down immediately (and that no further U.S. aid would go to Egypt otherwise) would risk that president's displeasure should he retain power. Also, representative democracy unguided by Mubarak and his supporting offiicals could have brought to power parties such as the Muslim Brothershood that were not in the U.S. interest.  However, such is democracy; the victors of another country's elections are not necessarily going to favor U.S. interests. A principled leader would not be so selfish and manipulatory as to hold back from exercising principled leadership simply because he or she might suffer drawbacks. Ironically, the drawbacks might be less than expected, for a principled leader has such credibility from being authentic and principled that any resulting resentment is apt to be tempored by respect.



In general terms, the American problem lies in prioritizing self-interested calculation over principled leadership.  The American society has embraced the bureaucratic age such that leadership is exterpated and replaced with incremental strategic management--even in the Oval Office. Sadly,  being "professional" had replaced being "principled," such that the highest officials in the U.S. Government privileged the expertise of immediate tactical advantage over the principles that were innately felt by the Egyptian protesters (and presumably by ordinary Americans as well).  The American "leaders" had forgotten that in trying to have it both ways, they would be apt to end up stagnate, confused, and not well respected.  Were the officials bold in putting principle above immediate tactical advantage, I submit that the tenor of the U.S. government would better reflect the values of the American people. In the context of the Egyptian protests, as in that of the preceding Iranian protests, People the world over were crying out--yearning--for principled leadership rather than professional bureaucrats in the U.S. Government. It is in human nature to value and respect leaders who have the courage of conviction to say, "This might piss off some powerful people whom I could otherwise use, but this is what we as Americans believe in." Simply stated, the belief is that a government is no longer legitmate if it loses the consent of a significant number of citizen, especially if they are willing to put everything on the line to "just say no."  Incrementalist bureaurats look quite wan and feckless in comparison. Such officials have forgotten that management is not leadership; tactic is not principle. I suspect that the attempt by business schools to "managize" leadership into managerial strategy lies behind the "tactic as leadership" error. In other words, too many managers want to be known as leaders without actually leading. They treat leadership itself as a commodity that they can appropriate without actually being leaders. There is indeed an expertise in principled leadership, and I suspect an instinct for it, which the typical manager (and government official) does not have. I contend that principled leadership is more valuable than technical expertise in the upper echelons of organizations. 

The irony of the Egyptian protests and the muted or ambiguous incrementalist reactions of Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, the American "dream team" of 2008, was that there was a disjucture between the U.S. Government and the American people. In other words, I suspect that the typical American preferred the stance of the protesters to that of our own "leaders." Perhaps one day an incrementalist and short-term oriented U.S. administration might find itself surrounded by protesting Americans. Will the government's answer be "evolution"? Citing the "need for dialogue" amid the country at a standstill would be laughable even if bureaucratic technocrats would still take their response to be "prudent" and thus appropriate. "Prudent" and "incremental" were not the words that came to my mind in watching the popular protests in Egypt in 2011. It was far easier to agree with the foreign protesters than with my own government.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/world/middleeast/31diplo.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/world/middleeast/02transition.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/world/middleeast/09diplomacy.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper