What's The Best President, A Pugnacious Penguin Or A Cuddly Pussycat?
Tom Madden, Founder & CEO, TransMedia GroupYou have to be well adapted to harsh conditions to call the southern-most continent your year-round home.It’s sort of like that in the continent we call the District of Columbia.There, it seems helpful to be well adapted to climb snowbanks each day, dodge ice picks hurled at you from all directions and tolerate transitory temperatures from freezing one day to sunny the next.In a democracy sometimes stalled and snowbound, at times overheated and perspiring, the question is whether it is better to have a strong or weak leader?While there are good reasons to want strong, decisive leaders, there are also intermittent dangers.Strong leaders whom many of us admire, sometimes can be emboldened to overstep what is our underlying supreme game plan for running our unique enterprise, The United States of America. It’s called our Constitution.On the flip side, a vacillating, docile, squeamish leader is a prescription for disaster and despair. Weak leaders risk losing our position as the world’s leading nation, a living, thriving example of why liberty and justice for all is the roadmap, the best prescription for governing and enduring whatever we face.So, what’s best, a strong leader or a weak leader? A pugnacious penguin or pussycat? An irascible conservative or an obsequious liberal?Let’s say what’s best is a S T R E A K leader who combines the best of strong and the best of weak.Strong enough to stay on a tough course as long as it’s working, but weak enough to see it’s better to change course when it’s not, like right now the U.S. is doing as we’re awakening from that 20-year nightmare--Afghanistan.Overly strong leaders have difficulty first seeing, then admitting mistakes.Weak ones are always afraid of making blunders in the first place so maybe in this volatile and precarious nuclear age, a little fear might be in order.Once we find the right balance in our leaders between strong and weak, let’s not forget about something called term limitsThey would cure what President Truman said were the worst legislative diseases, senility and seniority.Or as Mark Twain once said, politicians are like diapers that need to be changed often.I thank financial advisor Nancy Hite for reminding me of these latter two memorable quotes and my brilliant wife Rita for encouraging me to be balanced..
About the Author: Besides an inveterate blogger, Tom Madden is an author of countless published articles and five books, including his latest, WORDSHINE MAN, available this summer on Amazon. He is the founder and CEO of TransMedia Group, an award-winning public relations firm serving clients worldwide since 1981 and has conducted remarkably successful media campaigns and crisis management for America’s largest companies and organizations.
