SwimJim wrote:
"Ian St. John" wrote in message
snip
Or an exercise is real leadership. Nobody was clamoring to reach the
moon in 196x. The leadership (JFK) MADE it an issue and got the
backing of the public. Similarly leadership is supposed to be the
game in politics. Long time since that happened.

The leadership aspect of the race to the moon was the fact that we had
to prove the intellectual and technological superiority of the West
over the Communist East. The backing of the public was available
because of fear of the Russian bear and table-banging Nikita
Khruschchev. The results were quite good for science and technology,
but those were not the main reasons we went, nor were they the reasons
JFK made the call to go.

The point is not that there were reasons to do it but that the leadership
made the difference. In todays political landscape, they would first read
polls to see how many people are concerned with beating the Bear and with
going to the moon and then see if they can use this to justify the expense.
Of course, it would fail that test. They would then decide to invade Iraq,
which has been calling them pussies, put together the jusification based on
selecting for faulty 'intelligence' data for unreliable sources, and ignore
the public clamor against it. This is the failure of 'leadership' that
prevails today. Highly reminiscent of a spoiled child doing whatever it
wants.

But thanks. You are reminding me that most people today cannot even
*recognise* or understand true leadership. It does not mean forcing people
to do what they do not want, but focussing the discussion, reasoning and
getting others to WANT to do what the leader has determined to be the right
course so that all are together working towards that end. i.e. developing a
'unity of purpose', not forcing people to support a wrong action by
'loyalty' and 'patriotism' Those are the tools of Fascists, not Democracies
or even Republics.