Saturday, December 01, 2007

Hillary fails her first test of leadership


Much has been written, movies have been produced, and fortunes made by folks who have dissected minute by minute what President Bush did on that fateful day in 2001 when Muslim extremists crashed planes into various buildings around our country. Well if those events and the actions of the President can be used to forever taint the image of President Bush as some sort of inept, bumbling, and indecisive fool, let's look at how one Presidential candidate handled her recent "Crisis of Command".

Everybody knows the story of a mentally unstable guy who walked into a Hillary Clinton campaign headquarters, presented what he said was a bomb and took several people hostage.

On 9/11 much was made of the actions of Bush in the first 7 minutes of finding out, but what did Hillary do in the first seven minutes. Well it is kind of hard to find out since she shields herself from the press so much, but reports indicate nothing. As the situation continued Hillary took the bold step of canceling all her engagements for the day, even though she had none scheduled in New Hampshire, but instead was 100's of miles away.

Well okay surely she will make a public statement, maybe try to reassure her followers that she is okay and she is hoping for the best for the people involved. Uhhh nope. There are anecdotal stories of her being in contact with members of her staff privately but no word from any of those workers that this actually took place.

The crisis ended well with nobody hurt around 5 PM EST, 6 hours later, but still no public statement by Hillary. In fact it would be almost 2 hours later before we see her publicly. Remember folks she is running to be the leader of the free world and at the first crisis she faced which involved real life and death situation, not hypothetical issues, she was absent.

Do you remember what President Bush did in the first 6 hours of the most vicious attack on American soil? He activated the various security apparatus and begin to immediately to force all commercial airliners to land. He locked down all aviation, gave a speech to reassure the American people, mobilized the government to perform their emergency procedures in part to ensure the chain of command would remain intact should something happen to him.

Hillary, ummmm nothing. Here is a statement she released.
"I made it very clear from the very first conversations that I had that I would take their direction," Clinton said. "They were the professionals. They were in charge of this situation."
Too bad she doesn't apply this same reasoning to our generals and troops fighting the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So folks if you are looking for a profile in courage I am afraid you will have to continue looking. When the chips were down Hillary did what Clintons do best. Go into hiding, deny and plot to figure out what kind of political advantage can be gained from the situation, and trust me the wheels were turning on how to politicize this situation.

The guy didn't have a gun so there went a gun control angle. He did suffer from mental health issues so I will bet you a dollar to a doughnut that she uses as the poster child for her health "reform" plan to include mental health coverage.

Don't take my word for it just watch her speeches in the coming days. This guy will go from being a perpetrator to a victim.

The most important thing that came of this is Hillary showed exactly what we can expect out of her in moment of crisis. NOTHING.

In the military when leadership fails quite often people get hurt or killed. But leadership also means more then making the tough decisions. It is being able to endure the shared hardships and being able to inspire your followers to do the unthinkable and dangerous. If hiding behind the scenes is how you are going to lead then you need to get the hell out of the way. By not even going public from a place of safety she showed that we are all merely pawns to be given up in protection of the Queen Bee.

She had her test of leadership and she failed.

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