Politicians vs. Leaders

Our society leads us to divide everything into groups of two. Black and white, legal and illegal, conservative and liberal, and Republican and Democrat. This is an inherent characteristic of the world we live in, because by dividing things into groups of two, people get what they want. That is, a TV station broadcasts the news wants high numbers of viewers because that translates into being able to charge more for advertising. How do TV stations up the ratings? By please viewers, and viewers are pleased by simplified versions of reality and not so pleased by things they don’t understand due to their complexity. That’s why CSPAN and financial news programs are popular within their respective niches, but don’t have much in the way of broad based appeal.

It’s not that there is a conspiracy to create groups of two, it’s just that it works. It gets people what they want. It’s the natural order of things and it’s hard to fight against it. And we only have ourselves to blame. Remember the last time you felt like both Republicans and Democrats were crooks and you said “Next time I’m voting for a third-party candidate” but then for some reason you didn’t? Well, there you go.

The downside of dividing things into groups of two is that we miss out on everything else out there. Is illegal immigration as simple as illegals vs. legals? Not at all. We all know there are a large number of children born to illegals in the United States who therefore are legal citizens. What do you do when you’ve got illegal parents who have a 3-year old who is a legal citizen? If you’re like a lot of people, perhaps you think “Man, this is getting complicated” and you change the channel to watch something else.

Well, here’s another division for you–politicians vs. leaders. The way I see it, everyone involved with politics fits into one or both of these two labels to one degree or another, and that’s the way it should be. After all, a great leader with zero political skills won’t get very far, and…I was about to say “vice versa” but I’m not sure that’s the case. And that’s the problem. We seem to have a large number of people in Washington and elsewhere in politics who are great politicians but pretty lame as far as leaders go. But what’s the difference anyway?

In my mind, the major difference between leaders and politicians is that leaders are focused on solving problems while politicians are focused on getting and retaining control. The problem, as I previously alluded to, is that since politicians are adept at getting elected to office and staying there, they do, and since leaders are generally focused on solving problems, they do, and it’s a lot easier to find problems that are easily fixable outside the world of politics. Thus, the very people we need in Washington to fix problems are those who aren’t likely to end up there, and the people who are there tend to create more problems than they resolve.

It would appear then that what is needed is greater incentives for leaders to become politicians. Either the barriers to entry need to be reduced, or good leaders need to heed the call to overcome the existing barriers and make the personal sacrifices required to attain offices where they can work towards fixing the problems our country faces. Personally I’m in favor of the latter approach. Reducing barriers to entry in areas where people can do great damage is not something I see as being beneficial. Reducing barriers when it comes to producing high-quality home video footage = good, making it easier to become the head of national security = bad. Either way, it appears the problem will be only be solved by an increased number of people who lean more towards leadership than politics deciding to give up their personal interests for the greater good.