Copyright by John T. Reed

Barry Obama, Jr. was born on 8/4/61. His father Barry (the first name both of them used then) Obama, Sr. left Barry Junior and his mother behind to attend Harvard a couple of weeks later. Except for a brief visit when Obama, Jr. was 10, he never saw his father again.

Obama’s mother told him she was going back to Indonesia when he was ten. Obama refused to accompany her. She left. And never returned until after he left home to go away to college.

He’s damaged goods

Applying amateur psychoanalysis, I conclude the guy is damaged goods. Being abandoned by both his parents as a child apparently left him in extreme need to be loved by everyone.

Refused to get any leadership training or experience

Avoiding ever having a job before becoming president prevented him from learning that being loved by everyone is impossible, especially if you make decisions. Furthermore, trying to be loved by everyone paralyzes you.

Look at the U.N. Getting even the 15-member Security Council to agree on a motion is so hard that the U.N. rarely acts. Forget about getting the 192-member General Assembly to agree. But getting the 192 countries of the world to love him is exactly what Obama is trying to do.

Glad-handing as a leadership technique

If it were possible, it would require some sort of “smiling, paying out effusive compliments about each country, and handing-out-money” program. Be all things to all people is the formula for being popular with everyone. It is fundamentally dishonest. No actions could ever be taken by the U.S. to protect its interests because someone would not like them.

Hard ass or nice guy?

When my classmates and I were cadets at West Point during our first two years, we argued about which was the best leadership approach: hard ass or nice guy. I thought nice guy. Others argued hard ass. During our third and fourth year, when we often were put in leadership positions over lower class cadets, we learned the correct answer. You need to have both in your repertoire.

Some people respond to nice guy. You use nice guy on them. Some respond to hard ass. You have to use hard ass on them. Everybody needs to be hard-assed at times because each of us has things we ought to do that we are extremely averse to doing. Speeding tickets, April 15th, and jury duty are examples of the hard-ass approach being applied to generally nice people because those in charge have learned from experience that it is necessary to get the job done.

See my Succeeding and How to Manage Residential Property For Maximum Cash Flow and Resale Value books for more on such leadership lessons

World leader who doesn’t know how to lead

My classmates and I were 20 when we learned that lesson. By avoiding any leadership training or experience prior to inauguration day, the current leader of the world has never learned that lesson—a lesson that most adult American supervisors learned on the job. Even America’s parents have learned that lesson in the course of parenting their own children.

Results, not popularity

Competent leaders and parents understand that the goal is getting the job done, not being popular with your subordinates or other people you are trying to lead.

I also learned that you cannot please all the people all the time in other jobs I held, namely,

• platoon leader and company commander in the Army;
• property manager of various office buildings, apartment complexes, industrial buildings
• landlord to hundreds of tenants; and
• coach of over 900 amateur athletes

The correct approach is a mixture of nice guy, teaching, cajoling, coaxing, nudging, setting the example, firing, punishing, and so on. You need both carrots and sticks to get all your subordinates to do that which they ought to do.

47-year-old teenager

Barack Obama is essentially a 47-year-old teenager with regard to his understanding of leadership because of his total lack of any leadership or managerial experience or training. The problem is compounded by his having been dumped by both his biological parents apparently resulting in some sort of psychiatric disorder so severe it can be perceived by laymen like me.

Another thing you learn as an experienced leader is that subordinates often want to be hard-assed. It is not some masochistic, psychological disorder. Rather, they test you by withholding affection to see how you react. They want you to stand up to them. Often, they they want you to be tough so they can blame you when they resist peer pressure and such. Often they test you to see if you deserve their respect. The Obama’s of the world flunk those tests because they see every such confrontation as a failure to try hard enough to win the person in question over.

It is a common beginner manager mistake, but it is dangerously naive and ignorant for the President of the United States to be making such rookie mistakes.

Bad people

Some people are bad. They will misbehave as much as you let them. Generally, the leadership solution to such people is to identify them ASAP and get rid of them. The leaders of Korea and Iran seem to be examples of such people. Obama, however, seems to be trying to win them over with nice-guy tricks. Leaders like Churchill and Reagan called such leaders what they were: “evil,” and took appropriate action against them.

Most people can go either way. If they can get away with bad, they will be bad. If they are required to be good, they will be good. A competent leader smacks down the bad people in the group promptly, decisively, and unequivocally such that the other people who can go either way wince and say, “Oh, I’m glad I didn’t misbehave like that guy. And I’m glad I learned what would happen to be if I did before I tried it. I’d better behave with this guy in charge.”

Every group of subordinates also has good people. You don’t hard-ass them. You just tell them repeatedly to keep up their good work. You promote them. You try hard to retain them on your team.

Once again, Obama has not figured out such elementary leadership lessons because of his militant avoiding of any training or job where he might have learned them.