Decision Making: Barack Obama Vs. George W. Bush
This is why we believe Barack Obama’s Presidency will be successful.
Ignore the specific issue for a moment and read how Obama arrived at the decision to release the controversial torture/enhanced interrogation memos:
Seated in Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s West Wing office with about a dozen of his political, legal and security appointees, Obama requested a mini-debate in which one official was chosen to argue for releasing the memos and another was assigned to argue against doing so. When it ended, Obama dictated on the spot a draft of his announcement that the documents would be released, while most of the officials watched, according to an official who was present. The disclosure happened the next day.
Now compare that with the George W. Bush model:
WASHINGTON - Accounts from insiders in the Bush White House describe a tightly controlled, top-down organization that pushes a predetermined agenda, shuns dissenting views and discourages open debate.
Tell-all books from former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, as well as accounts from other administration insiders, shed light on President Bush’s decision-making style. Critics say the flip side of the legendary discipline at the Bush White House is a near-complete disregard for alternative opinions that sometimes leads to trouble.
In Clarke’s view, Bush’s reliance on a small circle of aides blinded the president to threats from al-Qaida terrorists and the negative consequences of invading Iraq. O’Neill said the tightly held decision-making process foreclosed any meaningful discussion about the impact of the bigger federal deficits that resulted from Bush’s tax cuts.
Their complaints about the lack of robust internal debate echo the conclusions of some presidential scholars who study White House decision-making.
“George Bush tends to make decisions on the basis of hunch and intuition, and then pulls together groups that confirm his decisions,” said Paul C. Light, the director of the Center for Public Service at the Brookings Institution, a center-left research center. “The only people who are invited to be on the team are people who agree with him.”
Bush’s fatal flaw (one of them anyway) was that he surrounded himself with “yes men.” Clearly, Obama is not following suit. This can only be a good thing for the country.
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I agree. I hear complaints about some of the decisions that the Obama Administration has made–or even Bush for that matter. But the fact is, is that the American public probably has little or no idea of everything that is going on and how and why they do the things that they do. I am by no means a religious person, but we have to have a certain amount of faith that they are acting in what they believe (right or wrong) is in our best interests.
Personally, I am optimistic about the Obama Administration. He rallied the American public during his campaign and cleverly raised staggering amounts of money with $1 or $5 donations. He continues to collect, even encourages, feedback on his official white house website. I feel like there is already so much more transparency in our government and that alone is something to feel better about.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/
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I totally agree, but it’s not our choice to make the decisions for the government, it’s the presidents and all of the government officials, so just sit back and role with it for right now unless you feel the need to take astand for what you believe. I believe prayer is the answer to every problem because a wise man once said “IN GOD WE TRUST!”