quote:
Originally posted by John D Harris:
Can an effective leader also be an extremely moral leader?
Yes, Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, Rosevelt(sp/) (teddy) come to mind as US presidents, Ghandi, Churchill, as leaders around the world.
Or is a leader arguably better when they're ethically slippery?
Arguably is subjective, Nixon was a good leader, and ethically slippery.
Does the process of climbing to the political peak of a nation allow one to maintain one's sense of ethics?
Yes, see Carter, Washington , Jefferson,etc. Leadership and Ethics are not mutually exclusive, nor are they mutually inclusive See Carter and Nixon.
And by what standards should we judge the effectiveness of a President? Their national popularity? Their willingess to be very unpopular, and do what they consider right? Their effectiveness at bullying and promising favors to Congress?
All of those are factors in judging the effectivness of a President, as are motoivating the population of people they are leading, reactions in a crisis, abillity to stand up against their nation's enemies, and do the people that they lead have confidence in their leadership.
[ 01-26-2002: Message edited by: John D Harris ][/b]
Churchill!!! You think Churchill was a moral leader? This is the man who threatened a vote of no confidence to stop equal pay for women, advocated enforced sterilisation of the handicapped, and started the process of deliberately bombing women and children in the second world war. He also changed party at least three times in his parliamentary career, serving in a liberal and a conservative cabinet at different points of his life. He was a brilliant leader of men but he was quite definately without any kind of moral guidance whatsoever.
I think in fact that that highlights the problem we have, we view an ethical leader and an effective leader as inextricably linked. I would say that more often than not they turn out to be exclusive of each other. If we look at examples of British politics (just to humour me...) then most people with strong ethical guidance are sidelined. As Virginia Bottomley said: "In this business you walk a fine line between being popular and being principled,". The "barmy army" of Eurosceptic MPs in the early nineties had the whip withdrawn from them for their principles. In british politics this virtually gaurantees that your career is over.
About the only British leader who succesfully enacted strong principles was Margeret Thatcher (and I disagree strongly with those principles, but she had them nonetheless...). But arguably she had to suppress those principles until she had become completely dogmatic in government towards the end of her third term. It wasn't unitl 1988 that she attempted to instate the poll tax, possibly the most unpopular, yet strongly principled, piece of legislation we have seen since the second world war. So whilst Thatcher had principles in order to become leader and maintain the position she had to effectively hide them, or at least not let them be fully discovered.
Basically I think it is difficult, but not impossible to be an ethically principled leader. The political system of this country at least does not help.