Mac-Coleman

19 February 2014 – 

What You Do, What You Are  

There are two kinds of people in the world:  those who break rules, feel remorse, and vow not to break them again; and, those who break rules, figure out how to break them again, and feel remorse  only when they get caught.  A corollary truth:  most people are good, but not very.

 

An orderly society requires good leaders chosen from the first group.  

       

I learned this as an Air Force officer.  Now, as then, ordinary people are required to become extraordinary Airmen, working in a rigid bureaucracy where individual efforts are subordinate to the success of the organization.   They need commanders and senior non-commissioned officers who uphold the rules of the organization, and who champion the guiding principles upon which the rules rest.  Airmen become extraordinary when they follow leaders who enforce the rules and sacrifice their personal desires to the needs of the Air Force. 

    

When a squadron commander breaks the rules, or puts his own success before that of his organization and of those he commands, good order and discipline soon collapse.  Airmen quickly see that their commander is nothing more than ordinary, and many revert to breaking rules and being ordinary themselves.  The organization then soon becomes a government-funded collection of self-serving individuals and groups.  Money and effort are wasted in an ineptly-run organization.    Only a new commander can rejuvenate such a squadron, and only through reestablishing adherence to the rules and to the organization.  

There are strong parallels between a bad Air Force squadron commander and today’s federal government leaders.  We elected members of Congress and the President.  For the nation to thrive, these leaders must follow the rules.  They must demonstrate primary allegiance to the nation’s fundamental laws embodied in the Constitution.  They must also be prepared to sacrifice personal or political goals for the greater good of the people and the nation. 

Our leaders’ allegiances appear to be far from where they should be.  These leaders reek of the ordinary. 

For five years the President and members of the Senate have refused to submit, pass, and sign a Constitutionally-mandated budget.  Last month’s huge spending bill was only a stopgap, passed in order to postpone the next budget fight until after the November elections.  Our extraordinary Founders knew that there is no accountability where there is no budget.  Our leaders are putting party and personal desires ahead of Constitutional mandates.  Meanwhile, they suffer none of the consequences of their actions.  Are the leaders who control the White House and the Senate so ordinary that not one of them will speak out for obeying the rules?  

Congress legislates; the President implements.   Extraordinary leaders accept that.  Ordinary politicians ignore it. 

The President’s legacy legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was passed through both houses of Congress without a single Republican vote.  So be it; legislators followed the rules.  But, the ACA also is the most poorly-designed and poorly-implemented piece of major legislation in our lifetime.  Even Democrat Congressmen and Senators are now speaking out against the circus that is Obamacare.  Their actions may be the understandable moves of ordinary politicians whose districts are full of increasingly upset constituents.  Or maybe they’re demonstrating the beginnings of pragmatic leadership over partisanship.  We can only hope.

The President, however, consistently actually breaks the rules of the Constitution -- which he claims to understand -- by unilaterally delaying implementation of critical parts of the ACA.  And he shows no signs of stopping.   

Finally, myriad federal agencies are charting their own paths under current national leadership. These agencies don’t need guidance to be self-serving.  If left untended, bureaucracies naturally expand, conceal their corruption, and resist threats to their accrued power.  Bureaucracies breed natural enemies to the Constitution and to the liberties of a sovereign country.   IRS scandals, the State Department’s action and inaction surrounding Benghazi, the Department of Justice’s aggressive opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision that parts of the 1965 Civil Rights Voting Act no longer apply today.  These are the acts of ordinary partisan agency and department heads who, with no extraordinary and honorable examples to follow, have been left to their own devices. 

The rise of the bureaucratic state should demand that leaders in Congress clearly define agencies’ missions and fund them carefully.  Even more, this rise must demand that the President show more allegiance to the Constitution than to his pen and telephone.   

Anything short of that type of leadership does not befit a squadron commander and certainly does not befit those who should be running this country.