A question of competence: George W. Bush has failed in some basics

National Review, April 2, 2007 by Richard Lowry

Politically, it can put Bush in the position of embracing failure. Instead of declaring an individual or agency's performance unacceptable to him, he defends the questionable performance and therefore associates himself with it. Managerially, it can saddle him with ineffective underlings.

After 9/11, Bush embraced the CIA and eschewed any finger-pointing after the massive intelligence failure that contributed to 9/11. Politically, therefore, the administration got itself in the awkward position of defending the government's handling of the terror threat prior to 9/11. Managerially, he got almost another three years of George Tenet--and the massive intelligence failure prior to the Iraq War.

After Katrina, Bush uttered some of his most notorious words when he was in this rallying-to-his-embattled-team mode. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" was a characteristic Bush statement, defending and encouraging a Bush loyalist. But it meant that for the first crucial days after the storm Bush was promoting and defending the federal response rather than acknowledging its inadequacies and declaring them unacceptable to him--as he eventually did, but too late. His presidency had sustained damage from which it may never recover.

Bush's tendency to circle the wagons can create perverse results. If a criticism of someone is justified, the target of it can still enjoy more support rather than less from Bush. This is what happened with secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. The fact that he became such an object of criticism from liberals, the press, and former generals made Bush more likely to keep him than to jettison him. In the course of standing up to the critics in an act of courageous loyalty, Bush did harm to his party and to the cause on which he has staked so much--the war in Iraq.

Bush's reflex to stand by his man points to a key weakness in his management style. If you are going to delegate and avoid getting mired in the details, as Bush does, there has to be accountability beneath you. You have to be even tougher on your subordinates--who had better be very good--than you might be otherwise. Excessive loyalty only enables drift and dysfunction.

LEADER OF THE TEAM

David Brooks wrote a prescient article for The Weekly Standard on Bush's management style when he was an owner of the Texas Rangers:

   He didn't try to compensate for his weaknesses--his lack of interest
   in the nuts and bolts of team operations. He played to his
   strengths. Uninterested in doing the things he was not good at, he
   delegated day-to-day management of the club and spent his time on
   climate control. He was a constant presence in the ballpark, keeping
   everybody, from the ushers to the players, feeling good about the
   franchise. His ownership group was an ever shifting stew of between
   a dozen and two dozen millionaires; he spent a lot of time keeping
   them happy.

When in 1993 Rangers manager Kevin Kennedy let star outfielder Jose Canseco pitch an inning in a blowout, Canseco hurt his arm and was lost for the season. "I'm not going to second-guess my manager," Bush said, in a statement that, if you substitute "general" for "manager," could have been made about the Iraq War.