Blog Purpose/Rationale

The decision to start this blog rests first on my 15 years of teaching leadership at the master and doctorate levels. It responds to the dramatic change in politics and governance that have occurred in the United States since I left work Washington DC 20 years ago. My intent is two-fold. First, I want to explore why our country has had such dramatic changes in politics and governance over the past several decades, changes that led to the election of Donald Trump as president. I was surprised by Trump’s election. Consequently, I want to discover more deeply the changes that have occurred over the last several decades. Why they have occurred? How did these changes generate our current political and governance situation? What may these changes mean for the future of our country?

A second rationale for this blog focuses on my leadership teaching and experience. In 2014, I ended 13 years of academic teaching. This gave me the opportunity to explore my understanding of the scholarship and practice of leadership in the context of readings much deeper and broader than what occurred during my academic teaching of leadership. These readings, primarily in philosophy, theology, sociology, and social theory, have brought me to a different understanding of leading than the understanding I held even several years ago.

I believe that much of what I and others taught focused too much on what might be called instrumental rationality, or on improving or sustaining organizational effectiveness and meeting organizational goals and objectives. I am not saying that such an orientation is unimportant. But this orientation is better connected to management/manager/managing than to leadership/leader/leading. This now seems a narrow, even superficial, way of thinking about leadership, one that seems less significant for today’s world. This blog will explore and hopefully develop these different ways of understanding what it means to lead.

Consider these intertwined focuses as journeys. They are attempts to understand, to grasp what is not easy to hold and discern what is often ambiguous. They are journeys that try to answer questions and perhaps simply to try things out. I invite readers to explore along with me, commenting on what I find and the inferences and conclusions I draw in these journeys of (1) exploring and explaining America’s political and governance challenges and (2) developing a deeper and broader view of leading that may be more in line with who we are as a country and a society.

I divide the blog into two parts. The first part focuses on the genealogy behind 2016: the events, circumstances, and decisions from post-WWII to 2016 that provided the environment in which Donald Trump bested Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. It provides a chronology, sometimes in fits and starts, that tries to capture the key elements of how we got to 2016. I lived through much of this time as an adult and yet my recapture of these years sometimes surprises me. Things that I paid little or no attention to then now stand out significantly, and vice versa. Weaving a pattern in hindsight is much easier than correctly threading the needle in real time.

Part 2 begins after the 2016 presidential election. It focuses on issues, questions, and concerns that prior to the election were not especially salient. I now hold the view that these are perilous times for our society and country. I did not hold this view prior to starting the reading and thinking related to this blog. This part covers in real time a broad range of issues. But I believe these issues relate, directly or implicitly, to leadership.

A final note: I write this blog much more as an academic interested in using research to develop the posts than as popular opinion writer. The opinions I have and the inferences I draw are found in the “comment” or the “why is this significant?” ending portions of each blog.

I end this post with a few details about myself, which may provide a context for the reader. I am a registered Democrat who has not infrequently voted Republican in federal elections. In 2016 I submitted a write-in ballot for Joe Biden for president because I could not vote for either Trump or Clinton. Overall, I consider myself a pragmatic progressive, perhaps moderately conservative on social issues and liberal or progressive on economic issues. Much of my practical experience relates to state and local government, which gives me a conceptual fondness for federalism. Good reasons exist for the demise of the importance with which we now view federalism. But I believe a rebirth of robust federalism could play an important role in improving our polity.