Well into the political hunting season for Presidential game, each of us can wonder, " What does it really take to lead the United States of America".
Can any human being actually lead something as big and complex as the United States?
The answer is: maybe.
Or better said, you and I get to see if the United States, or our planet, is able to be led at all, and if so, what perspectives might empower and enable its leaders. Consider 3 points.
One, let's examine and define a Complex Living System. The United States is what scientists call a 'Complex System'. Simple Systems are like one plus one equals two. Complicated Systems are like a Ferrari many, many parts and tiny, tiny details needing to fit together, and, the parts don't move nor do they morph. They stay in place.
Living Systems, by contrast, are Complex Adaptive Systems. Not only does one have many, many parts both huge and tiny and in between, but these parts themselves move and morph... more than once.
The Amazon Rain Forest is a Complex Living System. If you alter any part of it, the living adaptive organisms respond. They move and they morph. They reinvent themselves, or fail to, in response to the changes, the interventions introduced. The United States and the planet earth are Complex Living Systems.
So what? What does that have to do with leadership?
Two, let's define for a moment what we mean by a leader: Specifically an authentic leader. We say there are four characteristics.
Authentic leaders produce results through what they speak for and listen for--- what they communicate. Being authentic leaders, they mean what they say. They speak, committed to knowing that what they say is quite literally who they are, and when they do not honor what they say, they clean it up, fast.
Examples of U.S leaders who have generated futures that were not going to happen anyway:
In each instance, our leader stood for, spoke for and listened for the possibility of a future beyond prediction, beyond common sense, beyond the consensus, beyond the past. Their stand engaged key players, people, in its fulfillment. They dealt with resistance in a way that acknowledged it, learned from it, and was not stopped by it. They intentionally pulled for events that marked turning points, creating momentum.
Three: Consider that leading a Complex System does not require being a knowledge specialist, but rather, the ability to see the whole picture, the whole of something bigger than, distinct from, its parts. Leading a Living System isn't mechanical cause and effect: turn this, get that. It isn't just economics or management or law or ideology or politics. Authentic leaders don't lead from a recipe or a formula, like an ideology. In seeing the whole of something, leaders can see what future most wants to happen... beyond prediction, formula, history. While they are accountable for the politics (the parties/the interest groups/the give and take/the "Fight" of it), it is their vision for the whole of it that gives where they stand.
In this sense, leading a Complex Living System is more art than science. Leading is inventive, creative, at times, audacious; yet authentic leadership does take the past fully into account. It honors and is informed by the past yet moves clearly beyond it.
Who do you see in the United States that might now be leading authentically? Do any of the candidates strike you as an authentic leader, leading appropriate to a complex living system like the U.S... or not? Do you see this kind of authentic leadership anywhere: in government, in business, in sports, in the arts, in education, in the military and, if so, where and with whom?
Consider: Leading the United States is the art of leading the whole of it, the entirety of our Complex Living System, and leading it authentically.
An authentic leader that can adapt to Complex Adaptive Systems with a diverse range of human experiences, cultures, goals and desires plus more is being trained as I type. Those are the leaders that will keep the possibility of being human alive and expanding. That's the type of leader I continue to aspire to be in my daily life. Thank you for capturing this opportunity and sharing it with words. - "Think outside your Thinking" - Moroism.
With this perspective leadership roles, like POTUS need to be thought about in different terms than the traditional mechanistic, hierarchical, command and control forms of leadership many of us have grown up with. Our congress is seen as dysfunctional in that context.
However, as a complex adaptive human intelligent social system [CAHISS] it is working just fine - for its implicit design purpose: self interest on the part of the individual "actors", the preservation of turf and position/ideology, the protection of like-minded friends and supporters and the vilification of those who threaten the survival of those interests - enemies.
OWS, or the Arab Spring, or our families, organization and local communities are also CAHISS - just with different design purposes.
So what is our best case outcome in our, "hunting season"? A candidate who recognizes the limits of his power in the world of leaders as controller. A candidate who recognizes that he is a "strange attractor" in a CAHISS with a vision and commitment that the whole system work - and work in the most sustainable way possible for the maximum benefit of the whole system.
Do we have such a candidate in the field? That is the question.
Actually, the dot com bubble and Clinton's conspiracy with a GOP Congress to balance the budget on the backs of the neediest Americans gave us a surplus in an economic boom that was unsustainable. Clinton also served profiteering corporate cronies with trade policies that shipped jobs abroad and sold defense techology to China.
Bill Clinton certainly "generated a future" when he repealed Glass-Steagall protections, openning the door wide to the greedy Wall Street abuses during the Bush administration that eventually collapsed the economy.
His fingerprints are all over our economic mess, along with those of Bush and leaders of Congress of both partiers.
Yet everyone has the right to their opinion.
The problem in my mind, is our political leaders are in re-election mode at all times and rarely take a position based on what is truly the right thing for the country as a whole. If they did, the Dems would say we have to restructure Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare and the GOP would say, all our rich friends have to chip in a little more, and cut a lil' bit from defense.
Sadly, both parties strictly seek to point the finger. Neither wish to "genuinely" taking a stand and keeping it. Conviction vs. Preference.
I have posted many times that we need to hold all of our leaders, irrespective of party accountable, and worked to restore a sense of responsibility to the nation and its citizens rather than to profiteering corporations, who fuel the constant "re-election" mode.
To that end, it is important for me as a progressive to point out that both Democtrat Bill Clinton as well as the GOP helped produced the terrible economic crisis we are in. Clinton was not in a re-election mode when he repealed Glass-Steagall, he was doing favors for corporations, who helped make him a mega-millionaire with huge "speaking and consulting fees" soon after he left office. He cashed in, as did GOP Senator Gramm, former Speaker Gingrich, and Clinton Secretaries of Treasury Summers and "too big to fail" Rubin.