Leadership IS Communication

by bsmith81@slu.edu

It would be nice to think that the president could solve all of our problems--but he can't. No one can. The role of a leader is to inspire us to greatness, let us create goals and foci for our inspiration, and quite frankly, boost us and unite us. The message and the delivery are both important. The president's job is to "tell us what the nation should and can be like". If we get overt or covert messages that the country is only for the super-wealthy, that it is perfectly fine to send our manufacturing jobs overseas, and that the economy is essentially sound, those who do not fit this reality will experience disillusionment. Since most people in this country do not live in this version of the United States (although it is real), they need to hear something that reflects their reality--the other United States with the high foreclosure rates, disappearing jobs and crumbling so-called American Dream. That dream was fake also, but "THAT DON'T MATTER" because we believed in it and worked for it--it formed our whole attitude.

Obama's job as leader is to inspire a very large country with big ideas. If you concede defeat in a pricey, exclusive resort with an all-white audience who booed at your opponent's victory, you are sending a message without words. (My heart broke for McCain--he deserved better!) Obama's speeches sound like empty rhetoric--except there is no such thing as empty rhetoric, especially with a speaker as skilled as Obama. If you don't need a message of hope and change, then of course the message will ring hollow to you. But, effective leadership must be larger than any specific message, the communication needs to set an overall tone. Just think, one critical word from Bush about sending manufacturing and technical jobs overseas, and the practice would not have snowballed to the point where General Motors is bankrupt. Unfortunately, in Bush's America, no one works in that kind of job, so it didn't matter if they remain here or not. The rhetoric must be open ended enough to embrace multiple realities, with enough little "strategic ambiguity" to allow us to fill in the blanks with what WE can do. Then do that very thing.

Open-ended rhetoric like this empowers us. "Yes, We Can" has plenty of room for interpretation, whereas "Country First" means the decision has been made. Period.