What Does It Take to Be a Successful President?

Failed presidencies are a dime a dozen, but the American Thinker back at the end of August identified the Barack Obama presidency as on a track for spectacular failure. SEE HERE The question that pops into my mind however, is why success or failure is attributed to presidents at all? What do I mean? Well the president is simply one man. For a president to fail there has to be spectacular failures all around him. Like any man, the president can only do so much, only comprehend so much, only initiate so much and so the most significant thing a president does is pick those who will help him or her do the job. It also matters what their management style is.

Some examples: LBJ was a noted wheeler dealer and surrounded himself with wheeler dealers as a senator and log rolled a lot of legislation through congress and had a very big reputation for that. He inherited the Kennedy team and the Kennedy biases built into that team when he took over the presidency. He proceeded to bog down the nation is a war that the Kennedy team was unwilling to win. Jimmy Carter was a detail man who tried to run a one man show and put people inexperienced with Washington into power. Ronald Reagan by contrast was a manage on a loose leash kind of manager who picked good people and gave them their heads. The problem was that many of the good people were not from the Reagan wing of the party and diluted the message. But it was still a very successful presidency by contrast with many of his predecessors.

Barack Obama has put extreme left wing people into every job in sight and seems to have no idea whatsoever about management, which might not be a surprise since he's never managed anything nor does he have a public record of ever having achieved anything. If you do what you've always done you'll get what you've always got! Obama is trying to run the country like a community organizer, but that's a recipe for failure because of the inherent extreme polarization of the whole community organizer shtick. If Obama is as smart as everyone says, a proposition that I'm distinctly on the fence about, then he's show signs of "getting it" and start looking to broaden his base and get a wider spectrum of support. I'm betting that his world view trumps his common sense and that he goes down with the ship, he's certainly on track for a less than stellar presidency.