Lessons in Leadership: Why Obama Needs to Brush Up on His FDR

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/lessons-in-leadership-why_b_267710.html


Watching the gun-toting, Nazi-sign-holding town hall crazies, the talk radio charlatans, and the Palin-infected politicos, my first instinct has been to rally around President Obama and defend his handling of the health care debate against this Cuckoo's Nest menagerie.

But my better instinct has prevailed over my protective instinct. It's time to take a cold, hard look at how the president's leadership -- or, more accurately, his lack of leadership -- on health care has helped create the vacuum that allowed these fringe-dwellers and their preposterous claims to dominate the debate.

Recent polls show that while Obama's personal approval rating remains high (57 percent), only 49 percent of the public has confidence that he will make the right decisions -- down 11 percent from April. This means that Americans still like him, but have less faith in his leadership.

Given his incredible skills as a leader, this is deeply ironic. How could someone with a renowned ability to inspire, communicate complex ideas, and connect with voters find himself in this position?

Chalk it up to another of his strengths that seems to have failed him this time around. The president, though a dedicated student of history, has failed to learn the lesson of our nation's most significant political confrontations: they've required single-minded determination and the willingness to battle entrenched opponents until the fight was won.

The 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, the Voting Rights Act -- each of these required a bloody fight. Only after they were pushed into law, and people saw that they worked, did a consensus grow up around them....

Compliant politicians and a culpable MSM act as enablers by treating these preposterous claims as viable. There is no 'real' viability, mind you, but because they allow the premise into the debate, it then gets treated as being a credible statement, even though there is no basis in fact.

Without the enablers, their rhetoric would never have legs to stand on.

It's just that simple: don't allow idiotic ideas to enter the collective dialog as viable propositions.

The fight has only begun. Give the man some time before judging him a failure.