Patterns tend to be emulated. We follow patterns to create clothing.
Prints are used to fabricate buildings. Engineers carefully
construct models for automobiles and skyscrapers. A syllabus is the
pattern of choice for teachers to coordinate the upcoming school year
to ensure all subjects have been probably taught through the year.
Leadership also rides the rails of patterns. The style of leadership
often permeates an organization from the head down like a fabric
throughout its many varied manifests.

 
A growing group of Democrats have stepped forward to voice
frustration with the President’s leadership style specifically in
regards to the Healthcare bill. They cite his aloof and distant
leadership style as major reasons that the healthcare law was so
large, so confusing and so onerous. They complained that the
President was not engaged in the process.  It was completely left to
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. In the end the Democrats hastily took
the work of five committees and combined them, hence, twenty-seven
hundred pages of mind-boggling confusion. Now these complaints could
be the fruit of political whispers, which herald the demise of the
ObamaCare at the hands of the Supreme Court. With a healthy dose of
buyer’s remorse, these Democrats, such as Barney Frank (one of our
favorites) are probably trying to distance themselves from the
inevitable political fallout from ObamaCare’s implosion.

 
There are consequences to leadership patterns. Barack Obama’s “do
whatever you want but don’t bother me” style has begun to show its
influence throughout the government. The recent revelations of the
GSA have appalled Americans. Misuse of agency credit cards, gift
cards and extravagant trips for meetings has taxpayers fuming. And
no, this was not the Maine Turnpike Authority or the Maine State
Housing, although, there seems to be a pattern with bureaucracy,
doesn’t there?  And the President wants more of this?

 
Bruce Poliquin, the Maine State treasurer, has been tirelessly
exposing this type of corruption here in Maine. Treasurer Poliquin
has decided to run for U.S. Senate. The Maine Conservative Voice
thinks it would be fun to see Mr. Poliquin team up with Rand Paul, Jim
DeMint and other fiscal Conservatives to expose more of this
bureaucratic revelry, which has come at the taxpayer’s expense.
The fabric of the President’s aloof leadership style has begun to
unravel and oh, the tangled web it weaves. We now learn of lurid
rendezvous between Secret Service agents on the President’s detail and
prostitutes in Columbia. Has this ever happened before? Perhaps, but
we’ve never heard about it before. And this is the point. The lax
leadership style of the President has resulted in a decline in
discipline throughout the government. No one fears the reprisal of an
accounting for his or her actions. They get lazy, flippant and
arrogant. They forget that, in time, they will have to answer to their
real boss, the American people, who are not so forgiving and do not
take so lightly the expenditures of their hard-earned tax dollars.
The ship is not so tight these days.

 
True leadership must balance the fine line between micro-management
and engaged disciplined authority. Any leader finds his leadership
vulnerable when he must confront and challenge the strong
personalities within his blanket of authority, but if the fabric of
leadership is strong enough it can withstand the push and pull of
strength within its weave and still maintain its unity and purpose.
Some who purport to be leaders seem uncomfortable with the oversight
of those within their influence. They seem to avoid the strong
personalities and let them behave as they wish with no check of
authority. This seems to be the governing style of this President.
If the President is uncomfortable with executive leadership perhaps he
should find something he is more comfortable with…like community
organizing…perhaps.