The Blindly Loyal Executive

In its April 2, 2007 issue, National Review provides a comprehensive critique of President Bush’s executive and management abilities. The subject is addressed through disparate prisms in the form of specific issues—the Libby case, the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys, Iraq, etc.—but the focal, summary piece is authored by editor Rich Lowry.

He asserts that the President’s excessive "reflex to stand by his man points to a key weakness in his management style." This thesis is correct, if not a little insufficient. The tendency he speaks of is not only a "key weakness" of the President’s, it is his one, inherent, and possibly fatal flaw.

The President is endowed with virtually all qualities good presidents have. He is far-sighted. He thinks big. He is optimistic. He has an intrinsic sense of moral conviction and has the courage of that conviction. He leads, which in its most salient definition means going down a path that is the right one, but not necessarily the one of least resistance.

But the President betrays these attributes through his blind, extravagant sense of loyalty, possibly crippling those causes he otherwise so faithfully and courageously pursues.

Loyalty certainly is not a bad thing in itself, in politics and in general. After all, any man who can be said to be loyal has at least one virtue. But loyalty cannot be given without qualification. By supporting subordinates who are not performing, loyalty becomes tantamount to an acceptance and personal assumption of failure. Accountability then becomes non-existent and performance stagnates. Witness President Bush’s over-extended support of George Tenet, Mike Brown, and Donald Rumsfeld. Unyielding support led to massive intelligence failure, bureaucratic failure, and anti-insurgent failure.

An absence or inadequate presence of accountability is all the more crippling in the executive style and approach the President adopts.

There are two types of executives, those who micro-manage and those who delegate. Ideally, an executive adopts an approach somewhere in between the two, erring towards delegation. President Bush does follow this approach, as is prudent. The most important rule that governs an effective executive, after all, is to do only that which your subordinates cannot.

Yet by its definition, delegating is to entrust a substantial amount of responsibility to subordinates. Accordingly, the executive doing the delegating has to hold those subordinates accountable.

This is a logical inference of the rule. An executive who delegates all to his subordinates except for that which only he can do must assiduously maintain accountability among them, taking care that the work and responsibility they are entrusted with is in fact within their competence. If the executive is not going to do the work than his overriding responsibility becomes seeing to it that those he delegated to can do it and do do it. If they cannot, the executive must either then assume that responsibility himself or replace the subordinate with one who can. That is the only way the executive and his organization can be effective.

Extravagant, unbridled loyalty undermines any semblance of accountability and the most important mechanism through which performance is maintained. This is crippling in any administration, but especially one operated by a delegatory executive system. You cannot delegate and not then hold those delegated to accountable and still maintain adequate performance and success.

Such is the President’s failure as an executive. Present is an unbridled loyalty resulting in a diminished standard of accountability among those within the administration, whose individual components are charged with significant delegated work. There cannot be a dearth of accountability in an administration so run without dysfunction, and there isn’t.