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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (30671)	10/31/2006 7:45:57 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542008

"But most importantly, he is allowing himself to be distracted from the war and the business of running the country and every day that he is campaigning is a day that the country is without effective leadership" Now that's actually a criticism that I think in theory could be legitimate. Doesn't mean I actually agree to any great extent but I think presidents can indeed be distracted by campaigning or other things and possibly do other aspects of their job worse because of it. You could break a presidents job out in to management, diplomacy, and political leadership. The campaigning is connected to political leadership, but the management part could be compromised by distraction. Management mostly gets handled by people under the president but the president has to be involved enough to provide a certain top level direction, and make sure that the people under him are getting the job done. Leaving the theoretical and dealing with this particular situation I'm not sure what positive difference would be made by Bush spending more time on management and less on campaigning at this time. Also we only have a week left, assuming no major crises arises in that week I don't think the president has to be so hands on that the country can't do without his full time management of the administration for a week or two. I'm sure even when he is on the campaign trail it gets at very least his part time management, perhaps it still does get full time. Bush doesn't have to be in the Oval office to do his job. 2. The good of the country and the good of the party are two separate things that on occasions coincide. I can buy that, but if you agree with the Bush/Gop plan than its reasonably to try and take the required steps to implement it. Getting political support is just as necessary as day to day management. If you disagree with Bush and GOP than that disagreement is a bigger issue that the lack of management. Perfectly implementing and managing bad ideas can be worse than less diligently implementing the bad idea. Either way I don't see how its reasonable to see campaigning as a detraction from getting the job done. Maybe if you go overboard on the campaigning. Doing to much of one part of the job, at the expense of another part can be problematic. 3. Campaigning for one's ideas and for one's party are two different things (even if they coincide from time to time). Without the support of your party you are unlikely to be able to implement many of your ideas. Campaigning for the party (to the extent that the campaigning does any good) helps you implement the ideas because 1 - The party is more likely to share the ideas than the opposition. 2 - The party is more likely to accept ideas it doesn't fully share or oppose while the opposition might just shoot down such ideas for partisan reasons, and 3 - You gain political capital within your party by campaigning for them, making it more likely that they will support your ideas. Respect for the other half includes refraining from activities that they other half would clearly disapprove of. I disagree very strongly. Not with the idea of at least considering refraining from activities that the other half strongly disapproves of, but with the idea that it is some form of moral requirement, or with the idea that you are showing disrespect to people by doing what they disapprove of. If you can't or shouldn't act in a way that a significant group disapproves of then there isn't a lot you can do in the political sphere.