Rookie Leader Back on the Campaign Trail

Something often happens with new leaders when things get difficult. Instead of stepping up to their new roles, they fall back to what they were good at in their old jobs. It’s happening with President Obama already. His promised bipartisanship is more partisan than ever, his transparency is opaque, he is stumbling with cabinet appointments, his banking recovery caused another market drop, and on and on. Seasoned leaders use these kinds of challenges as opportunities to lead. Rookie leaders try to recreate their old successes. For Obama this means heading back on the campaign trail. Meet with crowds of like-minded people where talk is favored over action. President Obama has never had a significant leadership job and he has a lot to learn. But he’s no longer Obama the Candidate; he’s Obama the President. It’s time to leave the campaigning behind and focus on his new job.

Uncool Hand Luke

In the movie, Cool Hand Luke, Luke, played by Paul Newman, wins a poker hand with weak cards by bluffing. When confronted he says, “Sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand” which earned him his moniker. Fast forward to Tim Geithner. He presented his financial recovery plan – long on rhetoric, but short (really absent) on details. The stock market responded by dropping about 4% on his remarks. In this case, bringing nothin’ to the table turned out to be very uncool. Secretary Geithner has been in the middle of this crisis since it started. If he doesn’t know how to help the country out of this financial situation, that’s bad news. And if he is just suffering from a “failure to communicate” that’s not so great either.

Is Obama the PC President?

During the presidential campaign, I thought that Obama represented something different. Was I the only one? It seemed like if the George Bush government was a PC, then Barack Obama was a Mac. But look what happened. It appears that for the Director of Communications, the literal face of the office to the media, Obama hired the PC guy from the Mac commercials! Did we all miss the boat? Who was the real Mac candidate? Maybe it was Dennis Kucinich and we have all been fooled!!


(Photo credits: Alex Brandon, AP for Robert Gibbs and Apple for the PC guy).

Michael Phelps Takes Another Hit

The reputation of Olympic champion Michael Phelps took another hit this week as a picture surfaced of him using a bong. One might wonder if the next Games will have him abandoning swimming for the “high” dive. While we don’t know what impact this will have on his endorsement deals, we do know that this is his second time in trouble – the first being a DUI at age 19. You would think that the moral of this story is to keep your nose clean if you want to clean up on endorsements. But no, the moral of the story is this:



Don’t grow the Bill Richardson beard. If you do, bad things will surely happen to you.