Leadership

By Ken Frederic

It’s no surprise to readers of our column that this writer holds our current national leadership in low esteem. It may surprise some to read that’s not partisan. In fact, it’s a bit disingenuous to claim disappointment in the performance of the Obama Administration: He, his team, and his supporters have done precisely what they told us, eight years ago, they intended to do.

It’s what his opposition has done, or rather what they have failed to do, that is an enormous disappointment, a betrayal, and the cause of deep-seated fury shared across this country.

Business News Daily provides 30 ‘definitions’ of leadership (http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3647- leadership-definition.html). One theme common among them is having a vision (goals) and being relentless in pursuing that vision. By that criterion, the current administration has shown exemplary leadership as have Democrats in our own legislature.

Inherent in that definition, however, is that the leader is pursuing the common good and the common goals of the entire organization. An organization that does not share common goals suffers from bad leadership and that inevitably results in “boardroom brawls” as Carly Fiorina found out and as the current CEO of YAHOO is discovering. It’s also the stuff that spawns a hotly contested political season and election.

America does not recognize common goals. In fact, I can’t think of a single substantive issue on which the conversation isn’t divided by race, religion, economics, political affiliation, or something equally banal. There is even a division among Americans over whether our Constitution is a statement of common principles.

We are surely headed for a brawl in the coming year and if we allow ourselves to make uninformed and thoughtless choices, we will fail ourselves, our fellow citizens, our children, and the rest of the world.

This isn’t about advocating anything other than getting informed and getting involved. That can’t be done in the month before the general election and it can’t be done without effort. The ways to do that include reading legacy media and new media and actually leaving the couch and talking, face-to-face with candidates, community leaders, legislators, and others who agree and disagree with us. We will, of course, be influenced by our own personal interests but if we have not explored the issues affecting our community, our state, and our country we’ll make bad choices.

If we have not met and talked with the candidates or at least heard them explain their positions and answer questions, we will have no basis to evaluate advertising and opinions of pundits, opposition candidates, pure fools, and the disingenuous.

Letting others, especially opponents, tell us what a candidate stands for is simply wrong. It will lead to the election of people who stand for nothing other than election. It’s up to each of us to evaluate the candidates and decide whether they represent our own values and principles while, to the best of our ability, rejecting those who promise to advance our interests.

Unless we know fact from talking points and can explain and support our views to those who disagree, we cannot have confidence in our own views. We also risk being corrupted by slogans, half-truths, and outright lies.

As never before, this election will be funded by so-called “special interests” and most of that money will be spent on slanderous advertisements, banal bumper stickers, vapid rhyming epithets, phony postings in blogs and social media by sham groups, those annoying intrusive phone calls, and the barrage of litter along the roadside, in your mailbox or hung on your door. The threats to our personal safety, our economy, our society, our lifestyle, our religion and our fundamental rights are real and present. We depend on leaders to create common purpose and coordinate effective confrontation of these threats.

When we choose leaders poorly, we get poor leaders who make incoherent, bad choices. When we elect leaders who pander to private interests rather than speak plainly and steadfastly about why, when, and how we must pursue common goals that benefit all, we get leaders who purposefully subordinate both our interests and the common good to their own interests.

If it feels like too much effort or too much stress to invest the time and effort needed to become an informed voter, I urge that you consider leaving the voting to those who do prepare themselves and, of course, not complain about the leaders they select or the results those leaders produce.

Ken Frederic of Bristol is a member of a group of concerned Midcoast citizens who meet to discuss issues of public interest. Their weekly column “Another View” has been awarded by the Maine Press Association.