Responsibility and Leadership
"The buck stops here!" Harry S. Truman
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/harrystru162071.html
Harry Truman was one of the finest Presidents the United States ever had. The man recognized that the reponsibility of the US chief executive was awesome because he had been invested with such extensive authority. This kind of authority is a boon since it aids the executive in executing his duties per his oath of office, but it is also a burden. Vesting the executive with such authority gives him ability to respond to a given matter, but as "ability to respond" indicates, it comes with commeasurate responsibility. Truman recognized his responsibilites when he said, "The buck stops here!" That is, Truman realized that he was the ultimate authority and could not "pass the buck". When everything was said and done, he was the man behind it all. He took responsibilty for everything done on his watch like a good leader should.
In legal parliance, this is recognized as the doctine of "respondeat superior": the leader is responsible for what his subordinates do whenever they are acting as his agents. This responsibilty extends even to those actions not expressly requested or required by the agent. For example, a pizza shop owner may be responsible if his delivery driver punches a man if the delivery driver thought doing so was part of his job (say in the mistaken belief that the man was stealing the pizza).
Today we don't have this kind of leadership at the top. Our executive branch has engaged in rampant "buck passing". The intelligence upon which the executive decided to go to war was found to be flawed in many respects. While I have yet to find any explicit statement from the President claiming he was misled (by bad intelligence), the President has an affirmative duty to take responsibilty for the intelligence upon which he acts. He has not done so: instead George Tenet was allowed to "fall on his sword" and resign. By failing to stand up and explicitly take responsibilty, the President has tacitly allowed responsibilty for bad intelligence to fall on Tenet and thereby passed the buck. Herein, lies the problem: either you are a leader, in which case you are responsible for the nature of the leadership and any "misleading", or you are NOT a leader in which case you might be able to excuse your actions by claiming to have been misled. Our leader allows others to take the fall and cloaks himself in the tacit excuse that he was misled; as such he is no leader at all. Where is the leader that will stand up and say, "I did this! I deserve the credit and the blame! It was all me!"? Bush has never done this and America deserves an executive that will do so. Anything less gives us an executive and denies us a leader.
It is no surprise to me that confidence in Bush has fallen so low- Being an executive is a matter of getting the votes, being a leader is a matter of character.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/harrystru162071.html
Harry Truman was one of the finest Presidents the United States ever had. The man recognized that the reponsibility of the US chief executive was awesome because he had been invested with such extensive authority. This kind of authority is a boon since it aids the executive in executing his duties per his oath of office, but it is also a burden. Vesting the executive with such authority gives him ability to respond to a given matter, but as "ability to respond" indicates, it comes with commeasurate responsibility. Truman recognized his responsibilites when he said, "The buck stops here!" That is, Truman realized that he was the ultimate authority and could not "pass the buck". When everything was said and done, he was the man behind it all. He took responsibilty for everything done on his watch like a good leader should.
In legal parliance, this is recognized as the doctine of "respondeat superior": the leader is responsible for what his subordinates do whenever they are acting as his agents. This responsibilty extends even to those actions not expressly requested or required by the agent. For example, a pizza shop owner may be responsible if his delivery driver punches a man if the delivery driver thought doing so was part of his job (say in the mistaken belief that the man was stealing the pizza).
Today we don't have this kind of leadership at the top. Our executive branch has engaged in rampant "buck passing". The intelligence upon which the executive decided to go to war was found to be flawed in many respects. While I have yet to find any explicit statement from the President claiming he was misled (by bad intelligence), the President has an affirmative duty to take responsibilty for the intelligence upon which he acts. He has not done so: instead George Tenet was allowed to "fall on his sword" and resign. By failing to stand up and explicitly take responsibilty, the President has tacitly allowed responsibilty for bad intelligence to fall on Tenet and thereby passed the buck. Herein, lies the problem: either you are a leader, in which case you are responsible for the nature of the leadership and any "misleading", or you are NOT a leader in which case you might be able to excuse your actions by claiming to have been misled. Our leader allows others to take the fall and cloaks himself in the tacit excuse that he was misled; as such he is no leader at all. Where is the leader that will stand up and say, "I did this! I deserve the credit and the blame! It was all me!"? Bush has never done this and America deserves an executive that will do so. Anything less gives us an executive and denies us a leader.
It is no surprise to me that confidence in Bush has fallen so low- Being an executive is a matter of getting the votes, being a leader is a matter of character.
posted by Minotaur at 8:44 AM
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