Posted on 03/25/2009 3:01:26 PM PDT by reaganaut1
President Obama has wisely said that he will not lead in fits of anger, but his administration’s maladroit handling of the mess at the American International Group has helped stoke the flames of anger.
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Recent research at West Point on crisis leadership tells us that people need confidence in the competence of their leaders — not last month’s scare tactics, last week’s likability through late-night levity on television or this month’s diffusion of responsibility, with the buck stopping in some other guy’s office.
How is it that every political leader except the president “knew the issues’” around these old bonus battles and was ready to act? This sluggish White House response was costly in that the void was filled with dangerous grass-roots demagoguery that Congress had to vent through another carnival of hearings.
As Mr. Obama and his advisers chafed at the paradoxical posturing by a partly culpable Congress, they could no longer merely treat their plight as an inherited legacy from the Bush administration. These “new kids on the block” now have some ownership over the simmering economic civil war. As the comic-strip character Pogo used to warn, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
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Responding to a virulent populist outcry across the nation, Congress demanded testimony from Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, and provided tough grilling and legislative grandstanding — all the while sidestepping any culpability itself. Certainly, Congressional political shielding of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from timely oversight — along with other relaxations of financial regulatory reform — helped exacerbate our economic distress. Last week, Congress’s own hasty, ill-conceived punitive tax efforts to recapture undeserved A.I.G. executive bonuses further demoralized and confused high-performing financial professionals.
(Excerpt) Read more at dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com ...
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