Your Moment of Zen
columnist: Kishi

Topic: Presidential Campaign 2008
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

---

Can Hillary Clinton's leadership within the campaign be said to represent what she would do in the White House?

---

by Kishi
(Centrist)
Monday, March 10, 2008

Hillary Clinton's recent victories in last Tuesday's primaries have reinvigorated her campaign. She has ended Obama's winning streak, a feat which will capture the minds of millions. They won't pay that much attention to his delegate lead, a paltry hundred forty. The streak is over. Clinton is a winner again.

People all over the country are going to take a look at her now. What a leader she must be, they'll say. She endured a twelve-state losing streak, only to come back when it counted. She knows how to walk through the dark days. She has the experience to hang tough. She can endure.

So a tough gal like her should have some kind of crack team of political commandoes working under her, right? Preferably dysfunctional. That's how we like our heroes, after all. It's the sort of premise that lends itself to Jerry Bruckheimer films. You know, where the hero has these brilliant misfits who manage to turn the system on its head. Now, if it's a good movie, these people will fight each other about as much as they fight the system. But because they're just that good, they'll have the answers all ready, and save the day.

Sadly, Bruckheimer hasn't bought the rights to the Real World screenplay from God yet, so we can't expect life to turn out like a summer blockbuster yet.

Mrs. Clinton, though, doesn't seem to get it. The New York Times today ran a report on her managerial style. It's a short piece. In summary, the Times reported that she's been getting as many smart people in a room as she can and letting them fight their way to a perfect solution.

This would be okay, with some moderation. Conflict is a fine way to find and test solutions. That's why wartime sees so much technological advance. Without World War I, we wouldn't have penicilin, or gas masks.

The drawback to conflict-as-solution is that it takes a long, long time to actually get anywhere. And the prices paid or those innovations are steep.

Clinton does not have that kind of time. She doesn't have years and limitless funding to get the job done. She's got five months, tops, and whatever she can beg off of her supporters. The price she stands to pay for this is the Presidency.

Even so, this wouldn't be so bad if she would step in and actually manage her campaign. Prior to the last month or so, she actually hasn't done that. She didn't rein in her husband when he went off to campaign in South Carolina, wasting her time and resources. When asked to rein him in, she said he got a little carried away and saw no problem with what he was doing.

Okay, fine. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt. Mr. Clinton is her husband, after all. Maybe, to her, it's just not a fight worth having, with everything else she's got going on. Except for the part where it smeared her image and got in the way of her running the campaign. The only time she finally nipped it in the bud and did what she should've done in the first place was when Bill messed everything up with his Civil Rights-era claim. By then, it was too late.

But we can't call her a poor manager or a poor leader for one mistake. People make mistakes all the time, and she says she's willing to learn.

So here's what she's done that she will be made to learn from. She:

-allowed factionalism to split up her campaign, interfering with her ability to make decisions. This was done via delegation of tasks to advisors. Which isn't so bad, except that she deferred to their decisions in campaign matters.

-kept yes-men, openly valuing loyalty to ability. Her previous campaign manager, Patti Solis-Doyle, was involved in the campaign despite the winning streak. She finally got rid of Solis-Doyle, only to replace her with Maggie Williams, another loyalist.

-refused to adapt and change her advisors in keeping with the situation. Rather than go with a general goal and solving the problems on the way to getting there, she insisted on keeping a loyal staff that got along with her on a personal level. Because the situation kept changing, her campaign was repeatedly thrust into areas that it wasn't equipped to deal with.

Hers is a campaign that has mis-managed its funds, running out at all the wrong times, right after she said she was willing to do whatever the campaign needed of her. She is out of touch with what's going on, talking to a few close people and remaining aloof from the real problems. In fact, it wasn't until she actually stepped in and grew assertive with her campaign in the past month that she actually started to get somewhere.

Now, here's where I want to really be fair: the campaign is not an accurate measure of her managerial style. She doesn't actually manage the campaign. She just gets up on a stage, says some pretty words, poses for cameras, preaches her gospel, on and on. She'll have no choice but to be involved in executive decisions if she makes it to the Presidency. Who knows? Maybe she won't have enough loyalists to fill out the Cabinet. Maybe she'll pick people who are experts in their fields.

Nonetheless, the choices she has made thus far speak poorly for her. If her campaign staff is a preview of her Cabinet, I don't think we'd be far wrong in fearing for our future.

Time will tell.

Did you like this article?
If you did, Thumb It!
2 thumbs so far

2008 Kishi, all rights reserved.
Published: Monday, March 10, 2008
Last modified: Monday, March 10, 2008

The views expressed in this article are those of Kishi only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Kishi is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

Report violation by Kishi of Nolan Chart LLC's terms of use policy.