“Whose idea was this?”
Weekly Standard: “That is one of Obama’s favorite questions, according to Game Change, the bestselling (and definitive) book on the 2008 presidential campaign. He usually aims the question at advisers in anticipation of their telling him the idea was his and had proved to be a good one.”
If correct, this is just pathetic, and demonstrates Obama’s complete lack of the instincts necessary for success in an executive position.
A good executive does not need to always be the smartest person in the room. A good executives does not engage in status contests with his subordinates. A good executive takes as much or more satisfaction in an idea coming from one of his team members as from an idea of his own…because he understands that his job is to cultivate and grow those subordinates, not to act as the source of all brilliance.
Peter Drucker once asserted that if a person doesn’t hold signficant management responsiblity before he is 30, it’s unlikely that he will ever develop into a really good manager. There are certainly individual exceptions, but in general this is correct…one reason being that he will not have developed the instincts to focus on the performance of the team rather than his own individual performance.
The cited Obamian behavior is very revealing, and is entirely consistent with his top-down-control attitude toward the American economy and American society as a whole.
(Weekly Standard link here)
We are talking about the campaign. The Best Idea is going to be the Best Lie. If a dishonest leader surrouds himself with honest men/women he will be disappointed by their campaign ideas.
“Whose idea was this?”
I’d have guessed he was pre-screening the idea. If it came from Joe, for example, who shows flashes of sympathy for the private sector, his reaction might be different than if it were from Mitzi, the reliable Marxist.
Craig…my reading of the article is that he knew very well whose idea it was…it was *his*…and was reminding his staff of that.
Yeah, maybe you’re right. Or, more likely, it’s just a way he jokes around with his staff. Injects a degree of familiarity that increases the free-flow of ideas and encourages people to be candid. You know, a little smack talk like on the basketball court. Something I’d think one of the “chicago boyz” would understand. But, maybe not.
If Obama had demonstrated a certain level of humility & ability to laugh at himself, then I might accept this theory…but he really hasn’t.
People with humility & self-knowledge don’t say things like “Harry, I have a gift” in telling Harry Reid why he is a better political salesman than that master of the art, Bill Clinton.