The Presidential Battle of our Lifetime…..WreslemaniaXXXX and Heroic Leadership…
I have stayed away from blogging about the presidential elections, as I have wanted to observe carefully before stating my opinions. Firstly, let me say I like ALL candidates in this election…No really I do…!
I like John McCain’s war torn-tortured past and rise to senator story and I like Palin’s beauty-queen to mayor to governor to Republican VP nominee story. I like Biden’s story of challenges of loosing a wife and combating health challenges to be Senator and I also like Barack Obama’s story of the Internation skinny kid who grew up with multi-racial parents and multi-cultural rise from state senator, to Marvelous key-note speech at 2004 Democratic Conference, to become a US Senator for Illinois story.
They ALL have compelling stories and characters. This election is a classic battle of youth versus experience, Liberal versus conservative and change versus status quo. I am loving every bit of this battle right now. Although earlier it seemed McCain was complaining about media coverage, or lack thereof, with the Palin announcement, he has gotten quite a bit, or should I say, she has gotten quite a bit. 
Well the US faces many challenges right now, from a broken economy to the war in Iraq; from Globilazation to Inflation; from Health care to Oil prices.
I am reading a book at the moment called,
Heroic Leadership by Chris Lowney, and just learning bits of what goes into the making and molding of a great leader.
Here are a couple excerpts on leadership from the book:
- Establishing direction: A leader establishes vision and strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision.
- Aligning people: communicating direction in words and deeds to all those whose cooperation may be needed, so as to influence the creation of teams, and coalitions that understand the vision and strategies, and that accept their validity.
- Motivating and inspiring: energizing people to overcome major political, bureaucratic, and resource barriers to change, by satisfying basic but often unfulfilled human needs.
- [and largely as a result of the first three roles:] producing change, often to a dramatic degree
I am watching the elections closely, while monitoring each candidate according to the book’s principles. So I will keep you posted on what I observe, but also feel free to share what you observe as well….comments, questions and quips {once civil} are always welcomed.
Despite perceptions that Sen. John McCain has spent more time on the attack, Sen. Barack Obama aired more negative advertising last week than did the Arizona Republican, says a study released yesterday.
Seventy-seven percent of the Illinois Democrat’s commercials were negative during the week after the Republican National Convention, compared with 56 percent of the spots run by McCain.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/17/AR2008091703581.html
“If we’re going to ask questions about, you know, who has been promulgating negative ads that are completely unrelated to the issues at hand, I think I win that contest pretty handily,” Obama said.