The blogosphere’s political commentary for the week began yesterday with two posts that effectively nail what’s wrong with the Bush administration.
Begin by reading Kevin Drum’s May 3 post "Our CEO President" in The Washington Monthly. Drum argues that Bush manifests all the failings of any weak or mediocre CEO.
Drum writes:
"Bush styles himself a "CEO president," but the world is full to bursting with CEOs who have goals they would dearly love to attain but who lack either the skill or the fortitude to make them happen. They assign tasks to subordinates without making sure the subordinates are capable of doing them — but then consider the job done anyway because they've "delegated" it. They insist they want a realistic plan, but they're unwilling to do the hard work of creating one — all those market research reports are just a bunch of ivory tower nonsense anyway. They work hard — but only on subjects in their comfort zone. If they like dealing with people they can't bring themselves to read all those tedious analyst's reports, and if they like numbers they can't bring themselves to spend time chattering with distributors about their latest prospect."
Then Michael Bryan, writing in Blog For Arizona, keys off the Drum piece to argue that the administration handles crisis management the way corporations do:
"Corporations, when faced with emergency or crisis, do not investigate the causes; they avoid knowing causes so that they do not acquire legal duties to prevent problems. They do not take responsibility; they deny all responsibility, even if their culpability is obvious and they are forced to take some sort of remedial action. They do not take action by their own initiative; they remain passive if possible, shuffling personnel, changing organizational structure, communicating with the press their views (read spin) on the crisis, and acting only when forced to do so and when the cost of continued passivity exceeds the cost of action. They do not explore options; they buy expertise. They do not prepare for future crisis; they limit their exposure to risk or buy insurance. They do not remedy the consequences of disaster themselves; they contract out the work unless such work is in their core competency. They do not examine how or why they failed to prevent disaster, or explore how their actions contributed to it; doing so only leaves a discoverable paper trail which could be used against them in the future.
"In short, corporations handle crisis exactly like the Bush Administration; their first impulse is to simply hide problems or to deny their existence. Failing that, they arrange for someone else to take the blame. "Fixing" a problem to these people means getting it out of the news cycle, and delegating finding a remedy by delegating the task to the cheapest contractor, both in financial and political terms."
Read Bryan’s May 3rd post here: link
