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Politics : MITT ROMNEY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (273)	1/30/2008 9:56:18 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 5586

Of course, I've never served in the military, but this post is probably interesting to those who have served. It comes from a forum discussion of tonight's Repub debate: >>McCain drives me nuts with his boasting about his military service. He was not the commander of the largest squadron in the Navy... he was the commander of the largest attack squadron in the Navy. Even so, he was in charge of between 300 and 400 people. Compare that to a captain of an aircraft carrier who's in charge of 5,000+ people, or a Fleet commander who's got 50,000 people under him. Speaking of higher command, the truth of McCain's service is that he was denied higher command because he was a screwup. The "great leader" of the military went from being a squadron commander to being a liason officer at the Senate. That, for civilians, is not normal and indicative of an officer who's gone as far as he's going to go and who's given some busywork until he can retire. Commanders who perform well at the unit level go to higher-level admin commands and then to large surface commands or airwing commands and on up the chain... they don't get pidgeonholed with the Senate. McCain was a failure at the naval academy, he had major disciplinary problems throughout his career, and his status as a former POW was enough to forgive enough of those sins to get command of a squadron, but that was it, and once he realized he would never rise to be a real leader in the Navy, he left and ran for office. Lastly, squadron commanders are not leaders nor managers... they are administrators. The sailors in a squadron have no say in what's going on. They follow orders or they get punished. There's little leadership involved. Also, everything the squadron commander does stems from orders he's getting from the real leaders above him/her. He gets the orders, and gives orders to those under him to make things happen. Business people are much more effective leaders because their people can always leave if they don't like the boss, so you have to lead and encourage your people as you don't have an option to put people on report if they don't listen to you.<<