I served with many leaders for 24 years. The good ones? They asked you to do hard things, and you know either they had done them, or they would be side by side with you, as the difficulty/pain/deprivation/etc was to be endured.

The not so good ones, issued directives, then abandoned the field to more comfortable quarters, better food, and more hours of rest. Get on with it peons, and quit complaining…were the real or implied communications associated with the situation.

The bad ones, they demanded you push/break “the envelope” and go, in their stead, to do what was questionable or worse. Thankfully, I never had one in the third category, but I know peers who did.

In the first case, sleeves were rolled up and effort, physical or mental or emotional, was tackled with purpose. The second case: The work got done, but, it strong urge was to only perform at the “good enough for Government work” output level. Many times however, it was the peer discussions that got the frame of minds to the proper level of excellence. In this case, the assigned leader wasn’t the functional leader in the daily operations.

Applying this to current events:

The “Leader:” He turns up the heat to be comfortable. He asks you, via directing billions to develop “smart grids” to “conserve” energy. In the meantime, he eliminates the funds to safely store nuclear power plant waste, blocks offshore drilling for oil and natural gas, and his Secretary of the Interior rescinds granted leases to drill for energy resource on land in Utah. All the while, he tells us he will lead us to energy “independence.”

The “Leader:” He laments about you losing your jobs, your house…and then spends, spends, spends, and when there’s no more to spend, prints more currency, all the while telling you it was living on debt that got us here, while, at the national level, he pushes the National Debt over the cliff, telling us that will save our economy. He also can find time in his schedule to have weekly cocktail meetings, and serve Wagyu steak to his guests for dinner.

The “Leader:” Signs a book deal for $500K, 5 days before taking a $400K/year job, then gets upset that people working for non-Governmental enterprises are getting bonuses. Once more, he turns the power of his position into a platform to personally denigrate those who are laboring under legal contracts, and even Federal Law, for that remuneration. Before you are President, certain Federal Laws don’t apply to your financial dealings. Surely, he was well aware of that, not to mention someone doesn’t just appear out of a crowd and ask you to “sign here” with a $500K check in their hands, with your name on it, do they? Consider: He told us he wants to “spread the wealth,” yet he does not offer to share his new found gain.

The “Leader:” He asks us to get along, then top level administration officials take the stage before the World’s media and vilifies individual American citizens for speaking their mind, freely and openly, without threats, nor backed by the coercive power of the Federal Government.

The President of the United States, is not a good leader. He is one who will ask you to sacrifice, yet not give up his luxury in a show of “unity.” Worse than the circumstances while I served, the not so capable leaders I worked for didn’t take my money to keep their comfort. In this case, the President does, very directly, by his economic policy.

He takes from me, asks, and is working towards the power to direct, me to give up comfort, while keeping his, at my expense.

The only part of his plan intact is how to legislate compliance with conservation, via the “cap and trade” carbon credit system. He does not have a viable plan defined to help the Nation to become “energy independent.”