To earn a legacy of greatness, a governor must do truly great deeds that directly affect people — currently and in the future. Spend [political] capital, but not on the frivolous.
The final sentence is probably true for any leader in any context.
It's a tough thing for leaders to remember. After all, whether the leader is a governor, CEO, agency director, or even a pastor, the appointment initially comes because a constituency, decision-making body, board, or voters have expressed their support. The Sally Field Effect can cause the leader to think that because they've been voted in, "They love me. They really love me," in perpetuity.
If you're a leader and do your job, even if you do it well, often because you do it well, you'll frequently lose some measure of support.
Take British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for example. The scuttlebutt from Rob of Under the Sun is that British voters are perfectly pleased to vote for Blair in order to retain Gordon Brown as chancellor of the exchequer. Brown is credited with the current strength of the British economy and Blair's occupancy of 10 Downing Street is seen as the unfortunate price to be paid for the chancellor's continued service. I saw a BBC interview with Blair that aired on C-Span last night. In it, he made the observation that the better one gets at being prime minister, the less popular the PM is likely to be. In other words, it takes time to get the hang of the job and by the time you do, you're likely to have expended lots of political capital that could have been put to more effective use.
Even granting that there's more than a little self-service in Blair's comment, there is some validity to it.
That's why it becomes all the more important for political leaders in these times of media-saturation to use their political capital earlier rather than later. Twenty-four hour news cycles, cable news networks, and varied Internet sources of information and opinion give all public figures more tenuous, often severely shortened, shelf-lives. At the very least, it constricts the timelines political leaders have to address issues before being voted off of the island or worse yet, being ignored.
This is especially true for Presidents of the United States, who are term-limited and who operate in the era of the perpetual presidential campaign. C-Span has already begun its Sunday program, Road to the White House, 2008 and it sometimes seems that the presidency of George W. Bush is a fading memory.
I'm convinced that one of the many reasons President Bush has been unable to advance the cause or even the notion of Social Security reform in spite of stating that he intended to spend his political capital in the pursuit of this end, is that in post-modern political terms, he's already a lame duck.
A second term president may have popularity, but in terms of influence, possesses vastly diminished power. Power is much more than Constitutional and legal perquisites; it's that combination of political support, future shelf life, a leader's native communication skills, and legally-assigned authority that give a leader the clout to get things done.
In Bush's case, a Republican Senate, intent on placating the religious conservatives they feel they need, may successfully trash the filibuster when it comes to judicial nominations, paving the way for the President's court appointments and making Mr. Bush happy. But the Republican Congress doesn't seem likely to pass any Social Security reform program, at least along the lines Mr. Bush has discussed. It also is at this time, questionable whether the President's appointment of John Bolton to be UN ambassador is going to make it. The point is that the Republican members of Congress see themselves as pols with a future and they're not sticking their necks out for a President slated to pick up stakes and head back to Crawford on January 20, 2009.
Barring the unlikely reversal of presidential term limits with the passage of another Constitutional amendment, this problem will likely continue to dog future presidents.
But there are two lessons every leader must learn.
First, like Pat Brown, California's one-time governor, use your political capital to get things done.
Second, do it early, while you have that capital.
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