How Not to Lead

You may not believe me, but it gives me no special satisfaction to point out that our president's bumbling is becoming more and more transparent. But since our natural impulse is to emulate our leaders, we need to be especially vigilant about emulating the example that Pres. Obama is setting.

As Jennifer Rubin points out this morning, when Matt Lauer asked Obama whether he had met with the CEO of British Petroleum (BP) Obama bumbled his response. Clearly, he was caught off guard, and decided to wing it. He told Lauer that he was afraid that Tony Hayward would try to spin him, and besides, he said: "I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions." Link here.

Let's unpack his confusion. First, a leader who confesses a fear of being spinned is also saying that he feels incapable of conducting a productive interview. Second, a leader who insists that he is interested in actions, not words, cannot be the same leader who, in the same interview, declared that he had convened meetings on the oil spill in order to find out "whose ass to kick."

This public statement did not inspire confidence.

Apparently, someone in the White House figured out that a president who had not bothered to talk to the CEO of BP did not look like he was in charge of much of anything. So it organized a meeting next week between Obama, CEO Tony Hayward, and Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg.

As Rubin wrote, this merely served to make Obama look like a fool. It looks as though this serial obfuscater has again been caught in an effort to deceive and mislead.

All things considered, I would count next week's meeting, coming fast upon Obama's bumbled response to a perfectly appropriate question, as more evidence that Obama is a transparent fraud.