OK, maybe not friends, but certainly team mates.
I'm refering to Hilary Clinton accepting the Secretary of State position in Obama's (upcoming) administration.
It takes a lot of maturity to put aside differences the two politicians once publicly had, and then be on the same team. I sure hope it's not just posturing but then again, politicians have big ambitions and they are known to be opportunistic in order to gain more power.
Anyhow, read this article and contemplate what the last paragrah says. Because when I came to that last paragraph, I had to nod my head. Mr Obama was unwittingly not only describing the White House, he is also describing an administration that you may be familiar with.
2 comments:
Regarding "groupthink," I was using the Bush misadministration as an example for that topic in some of my "principles of management" classes back in 2003-04.
An interesting thought (and I hate to say I didn't think this first ;) ) about choosing people like Hillary, Bill Richardson, etc., is that by putting them into Obama's cabinet, he's making it nearly impossible for them to be able to run against him in 2012. Any of them breaking out of the cabinet in order to run against Obama in the next election would seem like an act of disloyalty. So she's really tying her fortunes to his career very strongly now. Of course, as Secretary of State, she now becomes fourth in line of succession, should Obama and the other three people in front of her die (not that that's every happened in US history).
Very interesting thought re Obama giving his former foes positions in his cabinet so they won't run against him! As someone wise once said - hold your friends close and your enemy closer ;)
It takes a special kind of leader to want to hear dissenting views and then be able to manage those views and pull everyone back together on a shared vision. Sadly, I just don't see it happening here - not now, not for a while more.
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