Leadership Not Prattle
In the US Presidential debate last night Barack Obama was criticised by Hilary Clinton for being 'all hat and no cattle'. Obama has argued that without the ability to inspire the American people, then policies would count for little. You could say the same applies in the UK.
Our politicians increasingly lack any leadership abilities, they are far from inspirational and seem to think they can get by using political rote. Nothing can be less inspiring than watching David Milliband prattle on about world affairs. He behaves like an eager sixth former in a school debating society. His platitudes, even by the standards of platitudes seem empty. If you could make head or tail of what Ed Balls has to say it would help. Yvette Cooper comes over as very pleased with herself. Alastair Darling looks like he's hanging on until he can get a job elsewhere - probably not in the city, but who knows. I could go on....
Much as I disagree with his politics you can so easily see why Alex Salmond is so successful. He has the ability to talk on his feet and clearly inspires many - I'm also sure he's no fool and a tough politician in the old sense of the word. After David Cameron's speech without notes at the Tory party conference he bounced right back. Both can inspire. Gordon Brown? One word. Boring.
I've said it before and it will always be the case. Leaders have something extra special. It's something that cannot be learned, it cannot be drummed into them with any amount of media training. We have the least inspiring set of politicians in my lifetime.
5 comments:
We have the least inspiring set of politicians in my lifetime.
And this is obvious to anyone who looks at them in isolation. The range of vision is very much smaller - disclosing at its farthest recession a universe constituted not of massive proportions and vast dimension but of negative magnitudes, of (racial ) diversity and (cultural) complexity. A world which is politically correct rather than culturally progressive; the world of minute scales, in which everything is balanced by its opposite, is held together by tension rather than harmony.
The first thing to realize is that with the multiculturalization of its historical sense, Western statesmanship has lost much of its idealism, vision and purpose. Indeed, the more one reflects upon this vision as a culminating triumph of the progressive spirit, the more demeaning appears its forfeiture. Nor is it difficult to believe that with the triumphs and carousals of Western imperial expansion long having passed on their way, with the colonial idea proscribed and social exploitation all but extinct, with a uniform record of economic success in most parts of the Western world, with more practical wisdom, political concession and intellectual perspicacity than ever before, men’s treatment of history differs fundamentally from that of generations nourished on tougher and more heroic values.
Politicians are merely the syndrome of that which they represent: a fractious collective! Under such circumstances all universal perspective is lost. If Milliband is a boy scout, he seems all the more to be a manifestation of the collective’s moral concern with political abstractions rather than historical perspective or, indeed, with the meaning and significance of Civis Britannicus sum...
Dreamy
I would recommend Barack Obama's book 'The Audacity of Hope', for anyone with an interest in this American Presidential aspirant.
I would recommend Barack Obama's book 'The Audacity of Hope', for anyone with an interest in this American Presidential aspirant.
oops..didn't mean to post twice.
:0(
So good you posted twice? :)
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