Political Leadership Deficit

Emerging Democrat Leaders: many promising candidates live and work within the party. But who will step forward in 2024 to lead the party and nation into the coming decades? It is understood that Biden is a caretaker President, a bridge to stable government and national purpose. A builder of stability is what we need today to calm the distress of the previous White House occupant.

At his age of 79, Biden is not expected to be a candidate. So far, Kamala Harris has not blossomed to take on the Presidency; perhaps she will, but I do not see a successful candidacy in her future. If the assumptions about Biden/Harris are true, then who among the democrats are likely leaders to run for national office in 2024?

There are no current front runners the party is preparing for leadership, or at least nonapparent at this time. I suspect the party is hard at work doing this, however. Let us hope they do their work well. The nation needs good leadership. To heal. To build better.

Emerging Republican Leaders: who will naturally step forward with the blessing of the republican party? Anyone on the front line? Who is being developed to lead the party forward? Does the party of Abraham Lincoln have a cohesive vision of itself that is rooted in Lincoln himself?

I don’t think so. Lincoln was bold. His actions grew from a deep well of intellectual processing. He had mission and vision in his brain, and he worked for it to govern a shaky nation at a very difficult time in its history. Critics were everywhere. Violence was everywhere. Resources were scant. Yet Lincoln pulled together strength needed to govern. And the nation prevailed and struggled forward to birth yet more visions of national purpose and strength.

Who is in the wings of the party to provide that level of leadership in 2022? Anyone? Anyone who can gather the multitude of party members into a cohesive team?

I think not. The party may push someone forward but not a true leader. They are splintered and in disarray. The leader who stepped forward last time took the nation on a wild and rocky ride to nowhere. Is that what the party is all about these days?

Governance Leadership: government is a network of agencies with the authority to serve the needs of the public. Needs are broad and many: education, health, public safety, emergency response to natural disasters, and much more. Organizational structure exists in every group of people attempting to accomplish something – making money as in corporations large and small; ministering to members of a congregation and its community as in churches; teaching how to learn and build self-sustaining lives as in schools and universities; healing the sick and vulnerable patients as in clinics, hospitals and doctor offices; effectively quelling violence and crime as in a police department; fighting and extinguishing fires as in a fire department; and so on.

It takes leadership to manage people. Even in volunteer organizations, all organizations require leadership in managing people. Finding those leaders is one objective. Creating those leaders is another objective. Leadership is not born, it is created and developed throughout the journey of living.

Government organizations need that leadership just as much as private organizations and businesses. This is not a competition of ideology; it is a competition for needed leadership that benefits all of us. We need leaders and leaders need us as followers. It takes discipline and development to follow leaders. We all have a role to play. Those roles are vital to our well-being as a society and nation. And global village, too.

December 2, 2021

 

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