Thanks to popular theories of participatory management, our
bloated communications bureaucracies, and film footage of FDR and Churchill’s
best performances, it’s now accepted that great leadership and great communication
roll-outs go together.
“Grand bargain(s)” on
the euro zone and the US federal deficit, actions to reduce escalating health
care costs and adapt to the aging Baby Boom long ago stopped being technical or
even ethical mysteries.
At a moment less dangerous for Europe than today, Prime
Minister Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, the chairman of euro zone finance
ministers, explained: “We all know what needs to be done, but we do not know how
to get re-elected after that.”
Inaction and endless in-camera meetings, in large part, can be blamed on a fair-weather illusion: Leaders can always have a persuasive explanation—a winning communications plan—when they make big decisions.
Responsible leaders—at least in our representative
democracies—needn’t feel so fettered. They are assigned the responsibility of
making hard decisions—on time—and answering later to the people. That’s the
sequence of events that allows democracies to keep up, and often surpass, the
pace of decision-making in dictatorships.
Good politicians ultimately need to be good in debate. Canada’s Stephen Harper, for instance, will eventually
have to defend his reforms on pensions, unemployment assistance, and
environmental regulation. Next year, Obama and Congress will have to explain
why they finally had to mess with George Bush’s temporary tax regime.
However, sensitive, democratic, humble, or arrogant leaders needn’t
know exactly how to win all the arguments before taking action. Furthermore,
often the facts speak for themselves or are so complicated and so susceptible
to interpretation that only results will settle the matter.
All the issues raised above can be settled to the ultimate
satisfaction of the public at large. Yet, leaders can’t simplify and
broker their responses enough that they can be sure that reasonable people will
understand and like what’s being done, right off the bat.
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