Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan discusses the qualities of leadership and her assessment of the current president. From my standpoint, this is really about the gut reaction we have to a person in a position of authority — and why some of them succeed and some don’t — even when they are quite bright and knowledgeable.
Does he stand for something? I suppose he stands for many things, but you can’t quite narrow it down and sum it up. A problem with his leadership is that there’s always the sense that he’s not quite telling you his core and motivating beliefs. There are a lot of rounded banalities. There are sentiments and impulses. But he isn’t stark, doesn’t vividly cut through. There’s a sense he’s telling people as much as he feels he can within the parameters of political safety, and no more.
Noonan continues:
Pollsters always say a politician has to project optimism. I think what they have to project is belief, and when people see it they appreciate it and become more optimistic. Does Mr. Obama project belief? Or does he project something more like doubt, or inertia? How wonderful it would be to see an American president appreciate all the possibilities of becoming a great energy-producing nation—all the new technologies and jobs, all the rebound they’d bring. To have a leader who feels and conveys a palpable joy in the transformative nature of this new world. Instead what we see is a ticket-checking approval, coupled with a wary, base-pandering, foot-dragging series of decisions such as the latest delay of the Keystone pipeline. It looks like a kind of historical lethargy, or listlessness.
I think Noonan is describing why we have a visceral reaction to some leaders. When we see that a leader believes in what he/she is telling us, we are rallied to either support or oppose him/her and his/her ideas. And when they don’t believe, we call it a failure to “connect.”
