First of all, I want to say that I'm not sure how to evaluate a president or if I should be judging a president at all. I have no insight into the inner workings of the government. Whether it's lack of access or laziness, I have no idea how the president is making decisions and what his thought process is. I don't what kind of information or technology he has at his disposal. I don't know why he even wanted to be president and I don't know what his personality is like. I've never spoken with him - I'm limited to what I hear from others, TV, Internet, news, etc. I look at it as all a big "show", but maybe that's just me.
I also think it's extremely easy to judge decisions in hindsight. Everyone wants to criticize George Bush and Republicans now. It's been a fad for a while and people really seem to get excited about it. I view things in a different way. I look at events and decisions that happened and I think that in our course of history, there is no other decision that could have been made at that time. What happened, happened. Life will continue to flow and there's no sense in criticizing the past. We are where we are now and our lives and our society will be molded by our present and future desires, beliefs, and choices.
I could also look at events in a different way. I could say, what if America didn't engage Iraq in a war? What would our country and the rest of the world be like? Would a positive or negative outcome have resulted? Would America still be around? But like I said, this thought process won't get me anywhere because one choice was made and we are living the consequences of that choice and all other historical choices up until this point.
For some reason, people always want to verbally attack and judge others for past activities. I do it myself and I don't know why. Even now I am just criticizing the "criticizers" and I probably appear to be a hypocritical idiot.
Anyway, I think I may be arguing against myself because I've shown that I think judging decisions is kind of a pointless activity, but I still want to think about 2 types of leaders.
First:
A powerful, opinionated leader. This is someone who makes choices on his own. Someone who doesn't listen to anyone. Someone who will pick an alternative even if everyone else in his country disagrees with him.
Second:
An analytic decision maker. Someone who can clearly understand what other people are thinking. Someone who isn't entirely sure about how things should be. This person likes to listen to others - maybe an expert on a particular topic - or listen to everyone, and makes his decisions based on what he believes to be the collective will. This person will even reach out to everyone who voted against him and embrace their thoughts.
I'm not sure if leaders in these specific characterizations exist. I'm guessing that most people are somewhere in between.
I think the 2nd type of leader can be judged in a few ways:
From what I've been told, our current president likes to listen to as many opinions as he reasonably has time for. I see remarks in the news such as: "Bush would never listen to me. It's a totally different White House now." At the same time, I see people chiding Obama for "flip-flopping" on issues. Some people perceive him to be a weak decision-maker. Some of his campaign ideas apparently haven't held (I'm not personally sure if they have or have not, nor do I care). There are trackers that look back at everything he said during the campaign and accuse him of lying. I would argue that if anyone was tracking me, I would be a "flip-flopper" on a ridiculous amount of things I say or do. My opinions change all the time. I take in new experiences and hear new thoughts from other people and I am a different person because of it.
For the 1st leader:
Some don't want a "flip-flopper". They want a strong leader who has a belief system that they elected him for and that they believe he should stick to. What would "Democrats" think if Obama had a change in his overall ideology and his thoughts were more aligned with what people consider to be "Republican"? Others will argue that a strong leader is out of touch with the public if they perceive that he has made multiple/meaningful "incorrect decisions".
What do you think?
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