President Bush – Contrasting the decision making skills of JFK
and George W. Bush
Submitted by richardstoyeck
Presidents of the United States can only make decisions based
on the information they are getting from the people and other sources
that are available to them. Different Presidents obtain that data flow
in different ways. This is particularly important because the events
we are dealing with are so much more crucial than other Presidents may
be dealing with. Iraq, North Korea, high gasoline prices, competitive
position versus China, long-term deficits are all huge problems that
must be solved one way or another.
President Kennedy had an open door policy. He functioned as his own
chief of staff, a center of the spokes strategy if you will. It was
highly successful. Unlike this President, Kennedy asked incisive
questions, and followed up with more incisive questions. JFK developed
his decision making skills very quickly. He was not like this on day
one, but he certainly was at the top of his game by year two of his
Administration. In year one, Kennedy learned not to trust the CIA, or
the military. Both organizations had failed him at the Bay of Pigs in
Cuba.
When JFK came into office, he was presented with a CIA plan created
during the Eisenhower Administration to land 1500 expatriate Cubans in
Cuba to unseat Fidel Castro. The CIA pushed the plan hard, and the
military sat it out when it came time to speak. The disastrous
invasion which took place in April 1961, four months after the
inauguration was a wakeup call for JFK. To his dying days, JFK said, “I
asked the wrong questions.”
He said that if he had it to do over, he would have told the Joint
Chiefs, “I want to make this an American operation, forget the
1500 Cubans, let’s do it with our military. How many Marines do
we have to send in to do this right?” The answer the Joint Chiefs
would have given was 250,000 marines. JFK had he known this would have
immediately cancelled the invasion. He would have said to himself how
can 1500 poorly trained Cubans do the job that we would need 250,000
Marines to do? The president picked up ten years of experience in
those first few months.
The next major tool we can learn from JFK is the use of an executive
committee (ExComm) in times of national crisis. When the Cuban Missile
Crisis took place, JFK did not round up the usual suspects to deal
with the crisis. He brought together the best minds he knew, put them
in a room and let them deal with the crisis alone. He would
periodically enter the room, find out what was going on, and leave
again. He knew that people react differently when the President is in
the room. His presence completely jaded the conversation and advice
that would come out of such a meeting.
This brings us to President Bush. I do not know if you have ever
been in the Oval Office or at a meeting with a sitting President of
the United States. Let me tell you what it’s like. Everybody
speaks with a soft voice in his presence. It’s like they are
whispering. Grown men who command corporations with hundreds of
thousands of employees turn to mush in his presence. It doesn’t
matter who the President is, the reaction is always the same. It’s
cultural; we are brought up to respect the office and the sacredness
of the office. After all, this is the office that George Washington
held, and Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, both Roosevelt’s,
Teddy, and Franklin. Those thoughts and heritages never leave your
mind when you are in the room with that man regardless of who he is.
Now let’s take a look at President Bush. Contrary to some
people’s thoughts this is not a dumb man. He has degrees from
both Yale, and Harvard Business. A lot was handed to him in life, but
he also knew how to play a pretty good hand. He has to his detriment
in my opinion surrounded himself with arrogant, ideological,
one-dimensional minds with limited capacity for growth.
Dick Cheney is brilliant. He is also arrogant, secretive, and
ideological. Cheney has hurt this President by not growing his own
thinking over the last six years. The way he thought in the early 1990’s,
is the same way he is thinking today. The VP’s secretiveness as
opposed to openness has cost the President dearly in our need to
safeguard the people’s constitutional rights regarding privacy.
Donald Rumsfeld is the worst Secretary of Defense since Robert
McNamara. Both McNamara and Rumsfeld seem to be almost identical in
their arrogance. He is sad to watch Rumsfeld repeat the same pattern
of arrogance that caused McNamara to lead this country down the path
of suicide during the Viet Nam debacle. Rumsfeld inability to
entertain new ideas is costing us dearly in Iraq. His bullying of the
generals who are charged with the responsibility to wage the war is
inexcusable, and history will not treat this man kindly.
Now what do you think happens when the President has men like Cheney
and Rumsfeld around him? The problem is that everybody else is
speaking in that low voice, afraid to utter what they perceive is the
truth to the President. This would all be okay except the President
hasn’t figured out the game yet. He doesn’t understand how
to get the information he needs to make good, solid decisions that
WORK.
In his press conference today, the President said that “I feel
confident when General Casey (4 star general-Vice Chief of Staff-US
Army, and Commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq) tells me what’s
on his mind.” General Casey could never tell the President what’s
on his mind, and that’s the problem with this whole
Administration. The President is not getting the information he needs
to deal with the problem whatever it might be.
In being spoon fed the equivalent of ideological dogma, the
President is finding himself in a position that JFK would say is
unacceptable. Even Richard Nixon a very strong conservative thinker
had Daniel Patrick Moynihan a very liberal Harvard Professor right
next to him giving the President the other side of the story. If Mr.
Bush is to succeed in the remaining two years of this Presidency, he
has to start hearing the other side of the story. I do not have much
hope that this is going to happen, and our biggest problem which is
the quagmire in Iraq will continue until new leadership is elected
with the mandate to change. Of course the ideologues will say, we
should have stayed the course. History will show them wrong.
Goodbye and Good Luck
Richard Stoyeck
Value Investing at StocksAtBottom.com
About the Author
Richard Stoyeck’s background
includes being a limited partner at Bear Stearns, Senior VP at Lehman
Brothers, Kuhn Loeb, Arthur Andersen, and KPMG. Educated at Pace
University, NYU, and Harvard University, today he runs Rockefeller
Capital Partners and StocksAtBottom.com
Value Investing at StocksAtBottom.com
