fromderinside
Mazzie Daius
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2008
- Messages
- 15,945
- Basic Beliefs
- optimist
Never underestimate inability to find appropriate decision makers.
Part of the job of the American president is to ally fears. Make people feel good enough to believe in tomorrow.
JFK used his charisma to inspire us.
Hitler used his for personal power.
Gorbachev credited Ronald Reagan's personality and how he came across with Russia agreeing to the detente. They believed Reagan could be trusted. His American nickname was 'the great communicator'. It was a skill he developed over time. He was paid by GE to travel and make speeches.
A president is essential.
He or she is supposed to reelect our values to the world. Trump obviously is horrible and has done serious damage international.
Trump's lack of leadership skill is reflected in the lack of action in congress on key issues. He is unable to form a consensus. He does not know how.
I've heard that cliché before, but what does it mean? Or, WHY is one individual a better decision-maker than a committee or a "machine"?
The only explanation I've heard for that is the cliché that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Which is a bad argument because if you need to travel 100 miles through the desert, the camel is superior.
The short answer is it all depends on the people and situations.
Trump represents the kind of business leader not uncommon up through the late 70s. Arbitrary and autocratic. Makes decisions and others clean it up. Does not take inputs and is surrounded with sycophants. .Henry Ford a prime example.
The technology business cycle became too fast for that kind of management.
When I rowed at Intel project teams generally worked by consensus by design. It worked because the engineers were all motivated and general of like mind. Disputes were generally resolved without management getting involved.
On the other had I worked as a contractor at a technology company. Multiple meetings with much debate and apparent consensus, yet after the meetings no one world take responsibility for actual doing something. There was no leader.
People went off and did what they felt like often at cross purpose. No one would take risk and responsibility for enacting a decision. Drove me crazy.
In an interview the founder of Sun said they they put prole in leadership situations and select the ones who can do it. There was no apparent criteria.
Leadership IMO is a learned skill involving failure. Trump's problem is he has never stood up to his failures.
The tech world in the 80s moved from a top down to a bottom up structure. The saying became do not bring me problems bring me solutions.
Solve problems at the lowest level. Trump represents the opposite. 'I' say what it is and your job is to do it.
A good leader has to be able to delegate and trust.
First elected presidents aren't usually charismatic characters, entertainment stars maybe, but charismatic, naw. The top attribute of a president is perception by people she can make decisions in the national interest.
And more often a FALSE perception.
That's part of what "charismatic" means. It's someone who is good at deceiving people, giving them a false perception, making them believe that s/he can make good decisions. Instilling that false impression in people is a big part of what "charismatic" means.
A "president" gets elected by giving good speeches which persuade listeners that s/he has all the answers and is appointed by God to lead our Country to the Promised Land.
It doesn't necessarily mean the charisma of a Martin Luther King or Billy Graham, etc. That kind of charisma has a different function than that of a political candidate charisma. The President/political candidate transmits vibes of being fully in control and strong and powerful and omnipotent. This is a dangerous kind of charisma.
It's the Donald Trump -- Barrack Obama -- Ronald Reagan MESSIAH/HERO kind of charisma to lead us to the Promised Land. A committee is less dramatic, less entertaining, less thrilling. But it would make better decisions, and would not be able to perpetrate the deception of the charismatic speech-maker demagogues we are getting and will get more of.
Charismatic is "exercising a compelling charm which inspires devotion in others". There is nothing to do with deceiving since it is the charmed who embody the word.
Charismatic is "exercising a compelling charm which inspires devotion in others". There is nothing to do with deceiving since it is the charmed who embody the word.
"embody the word"?
The charmed are the ones deceived by the leader/demagogue's charm. I.e., those who hear the "brilliant" speeches and are inspired to vote for the speech-maker who is good at lying to them in order to manipulate them to vote for him/her. That's the primary talent of the good speech-maker leader president demagogue. I.e., to manipulate the listeners to vote for him/her, whatever s/he has to say to accomplish this.
And there's no reason to think that those talented at giving such speeches would be good decision-makers. The talent to manipulate masses of voters is a totally different talent than that of making good decisions.
I would have to disagree. Human nature and human interactions have not changed since the days of ancient Greece. Differences in technology does not change that. The only change is the number of people in the groups interacting. Where there was once tens or hundreds of thousands in the groups, now there are tens or hundreds of millions in those groups.The founders could not have foreseen the scope and complexity of today.
^ ^ ^
Yes. The really, really tough decisions are those needed to resolve some really dire and threatening situation within the constraints of current laws or regulations when it would be easily resolved by ignoring approved procedures or the law. Lower echelons can decide how to resolve problems by following procedures. Going beyond normal approved procedures requires higher authority.
Why can't the higher authority be a committee rather than one demagogue speech-maker pundit whose only talent is an ability to manipulate idiots to vote for him?
Short answer people are more comfortable with identifiable characters.
I'm sure we all remember Ted Sorensen President Kennedy's speechwriter right? "Ask not ...."
So what grade did you skip to miss the great man theory? I don't think committees inspire peoples.
What I remember is leaders like Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Napoleon, Caesar, Genghis Khan ... Never a committee unless . . .
. . . unless it's something bad like CABAL which is actually five people or The Central Committee led by Stalin, Brezhnev, Gorbachev ....
As for products how about the SR 71 and Kelly Johnson, Nuclear submarine force and Admiral Rickover, Forty minutes over Tokyo and Dolittle ....
It's getting to be like you're entitled to your own facts.
You're not.
A committee of 535 (our House and Senate) demagogue speech maker pundits whose only talent is an ability to manipulate idiots to vote for them take forever to make a decision even when a delay would be disastrous.^ ^ ^
Yes. The really, really tough decisions are those needed to resolve some really dire and threatening situation within the constraints of current laws or regulations when it would be easily resolved by ignoring approved procedures or the law. Lower echelons can decide how to resolve problems by following procedures. Going beyond normal approved procedures requires higher authority.
Why can't the higher authority be a committee rather than one demagogue speech-maker pundit whose only talent is an ability to manipulate idiots to vote for him?
Short answer people are more comfortable with identifiable characters.
....
That's why we need a committee to make the decisions instead of one "Leader" dictator who makes up his own "facts" and can't be corrected because he has absolute power to impose his "truth" onto everyone else.
As for products how about the SR 71 and Kelly Johnson, Nuclear submarine force and Admiral Rickover, Forty minutes over Tokyo and Dolittle ....
It's getting to be like you're entitled to your own facts.
You're not.
So the best system of government invented so far is a Westminster-style democracy.
Do you have any better ideas?lol According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, a UK-based corporation. You're just channeling capitalist first-world propaganda as if it's neutral an unbiased.So the best system of government invented so far is a Westminster-style democracy.
Why don't you do the work of demonstrating that that is the case?EDIT: measures such as these also push the lie that the way to choose a system of government is to look at all the systems as they are practiced throughout the world and pick the one with the best outcomes, as if all countries started from the same place and had the same material conditions, with the only difference being their way of counting votes and deciding on leaders. As if no system exploits anybody else, and can be judged purely on its merits within its own borders. It puts the issue forward as an engineering problem with fixed inputs and outputs rather than a dialectical problem that takes history and culture into account.
It should be obvious that comparing the statistics of colonized nations to those of the nations doing the colonizing is not going to be very informative, except as a way of showing that imperialism makes some countries rich and prosperous at the expense of others. This is doubly true in the case of nations that have undergone popular revolutions, because the revolutionary government is immediately vulnerable to counter-revolution by the previous one, or by their allies elsewhere in the world.Do you have any better ideas?
Why don't you do the work of demonstrating that that is the case?EDIT: measures such as these also push the lie that the way to choose a system of government is to look at all the systems as they are practiced throughout the world and pick the one with the best outcomes, as if all countries started from the same place and had the same material conditions, with the only difference being their way of counting votes and deciding on leaders. As if no system exploits anybody else, and can be judged purely on its merits within its own borders. It puts the issue forward as an engineering problem with fixed inputs and outputs rather than a dialectical problem that takes history and culture into account.
I do concede some path dependence, like Westminster-system monarchies vs. republics. Can you demonstrate some additional path dependence?
How does comparison of governing systems lead to a determination of whether there need be a president for us. It doesn't even lead to whether there be a specific system for us.
How does comparison of governing systems lead to a determination of whether there need be a president for us. It doesn't even lead to whether there be a specific system for us.
It doesn't. It does however belie the narcissistic notion many American seem to harbour - that their is one and only one right form of governance, and it's the one the divinely inspired founding fathers set out.
How does comparison of governing systems lead to a determination of whether there need be a president for us. It doesn't even lead to whether there be a specific system for us.
It doesn't. It does however belie the narcissistic notion many American seem to harbour - that their is one and only one right form of governance, and it's the one the divinely inspired founding fathers set out.
Oh. Like religious order. Divine is the stye in eye of the beholder brother. .... be a believer, be blinded by the light (sing song)