{"id":1547,"date":"2003-11-06T11:18:16","date_gmt":"2003-11-06T16:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2003\/11\/06\/1547.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:43:29","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:43:29","slug":"gov-deans-special-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2003\/11\/06\/gov-deans-special-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Dean’s Special Election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gov. Dean has, it seems, asked his supporters to vote on whether to accept federal matching funds<\/a>. It's certainly an interesting political move; there's an awful lot to be said for it on many levels. In essence, it seems to me, he is ramping up even further the image of his campaign as being a campaign of citizens with computers rather than a campaign of consultants with copybooks. A campaign of empowerment, a grass-roots campaign, a people's campaign.\n

I don't buy it, myself. I think the Dean campaign was very smart about using the web as a fund-raising tool, and an organizing tool; I give them that. I think that Dean's campaign people have run a good campaign so far, and I'm not knocking them. I don't particularly trust them, either; my immediate reaction was that they had already decided how the vote would come out, and that the whole thing was more or less a fraud. I have no basis for that; I don't say it's true, I say it is my gut instinct.\n

That's a wild-goose chase, anyway, though. The more important question it brings us is one of leadership. Is it an act of leadership to make your decision (on what is, more or less, an ethical issue, I suppose) based on the outcome of a poll of your supporters? I honestly am of two minds about this.\n

Before I talk about my two minds on this topic, I should point out that Sen. Kerry, for instance, will consult polls about whether to accept federal matching funds before making his decision. That's different in several ways from Gov. Dean's plan, the most obvious of which is the element of transparency in Gov. Dean's so-called election method. The questions about Gov. Dean are not unique to him, but are brought into relief by his methods, and so I'll talk about them in his case.\n

OK, on the down side, we get exasperated when our leaders rely too heavily on polls, both because polls are not necessarily accurate representation of how we feel, and also because that implies that the leader has no stern stuff of his own. This is a poll. It's not a scientific poll, nor a national poll, but it is a poll, and the Governor is saying he will abide by its results. If that's how he's planning to govern, I want no part of it. One aspect of leadership is knowing where you are going. I am often very nasty about books such as Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer<\/a>, as Shackleton is a great example of bad<\/I> leadership, that is, someone you wouldn't want to follow. Donner on Leadership. McLellan on Leadership. You have to know where you are going, boys, if you want to lead.\n

Further, the decision about whose money to take and under what circumstances is an ethical one. On ethical decisions more than any others, you want a leader who knows what he is about and listens to his own good conscience. Ultimately, there will be many situations where the President will have to make his (or her) own choice, guided by different opinions and arguing advisors and even contradictory evidence; we want to know that when it comes down to the voice in the back of the head, Gov. Dean recognizes and trusts what it says (and, of course, that it says the right thing).\n

On the other hand, part of leadership is knowing what your followers want. There's no great advantage in striding off in the right direction if nobody is following. Plus, there's an element of humility in asking advice. One of the major problems (in Your Humble Blogger's opinion, the<\/I> major problem with our current administration is its complete inability to understand that it might be wrong on some topics at some times. President Clinton, for all of his waffle, had a healthy respect for other people's opinions even when the differed from his; his administration used polls partly out of cheap political cynicism and partly out of a desire to represent the American People as a delegate. The ability to listen is a great one, and if this is Gov. Dean's way of listening, more power to him.\n

And, of course, there's the simple fact that unless his supporters do support him in declining federal matching funds, there's no point in doing it, as he won't get the money he expects them to raise. In that way, this is more of a decision about his supporters and their interests than about his ethics, and more of a tactical decision than a strategic one. He has already made the ethical decision (he wants to raise as much money as he can), and simply wants to know the best way of going about it. So why not ask the people who will be raising the money?\n

In other words, I find this issue complicated and confusing. It's hard enough to try to figure out what kind leaders the candidates will be, without trying to figure out what kind of leader I want. Feh.\n

By the way, I'm declaring open season on Election 04. Any aspects my Gentle Readers want to talk about, let me know and I'll open up discussion. I'll have my own questions, in a day or two.\n

Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gov. Dean has, it seems, asked his supporters to vote on whether to accept federal matching funds. It’s certainly an interesting political move; there’s an awful lot to be said for it on many levels. In essence, it seems to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16861,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions\/16861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}