Why does Dana Milbank hate Fuzzy Math? Why does he hate... "Leaders"?

Washington Post
White House Forecasts Often Miss The Mark

By Dana Milbank

...These are not isolated cases. Over three years, the administration has repeatedly and significantly overstated the government's fiscal health and the number of jobs the economy would create, but economists and politicians disagree about why.

The president, though not addressing the predictions directly, regularly points to four events that altered economic expectations: the recession; the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; the corporate governance scandals; and war in Iraq. "We've been through a lot," Bush said in an economics speech Thursday. "But we acted, here in Washington. I led."

"I led."

Frank Lorenzo led too.

But Lorenzo was lousy on people issues, famously saying, "I'm not paid to be a candy ass" The mid-1980s were a bad time to take that approach. Those were the years when the so-called Japanese model of management, which emphasized cooperation between management and labor, was creating a stir. The Lorenzo model was old school: if the unions give you any trouble, break 'em.

That strategy had worked for him at Continental, where he'd filed Chapter 1 I despite the airline's $60 million in cash reserves, in order to exploit a provision in the Bankruptcy Code allowing him to abrogate his contracts with the unions, But Congress plugged that loophole by the time Lorenzo went to the mat with Charles Bryan, IAM chapter president. Lorenzo might have succeeded in breaking the machinists alone, but when flight attendants and pilots honored the picket lines, he should have known it was time to deal. He didn't.

Instead he tried again for a strategic advantage through the bankruptcy courts, by filing Chapter 1I in the Southern District of New York where bankruptcy judges were believed to be more favorably disposed toward management than in Miami where Eastern was headquartered, Eastern had to hide behind the skirts of its subsidiary, Ionosphere Clubs, Inc., a New York corporation, in order to got into SDNY. Six minutes later, Eastern itself filed in the same court as a related proceeding.

The case was assigned to Judge Burton Lifland, whom Eastern's bankruptcy lawyer, Harvey Miller, knew well, but Lorenzo was mistaken if he believed that serendipitous lottery assignment would be his salvation. Judge Lifland a year later declared Lorenzo unfit to run the airline and appointed Martin Shugrue as trustee.

Two years after Eastern pancaked, Lorenzo tried to start a new airline, "Friendship." The Department of Transportation figured he'd "led" enough. They too, told him to find another line of work.

Leadership is a hinky thing. You lead by doing, by example. You lead by being about more, not less. Building, not cutting. You close gaps, instead of inventing new ones. You understand the tribal relationship between "We" and "Me". You take the hit, even when it's not your fault. You do NOT say things like this:

The president . . . regularly points to four events that altered economic expectations: the recession; the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; the corporate governance scandals; and war in Iraq.

If you lead by the Coercive model, prettied up with the occasional hackneyed burst of the Authoritative, as Bush does, you have to be whipsmart, 5 squares ahead, and able to wield, on a dime, a grifter's intuitive understanding of human response. A pretty rare package. One absent here. Once you reach the point of saying things like, "...I led," people are buffing resumes and eyeing the exits. You are toast.

Your degree of crispness is determined by several factors: First, the embarassment threshold of your previous benefactors or supporters, be it management committee or party elders. Second, the degree to which your presence becomes an identifiable drag on the organzation, as reflected by the comments and questions of your customers (voters) and the patience and willingness of those charged with providing the answers: Employees. These two factors are the artificial gravity holding you up. Your resume and past success count for naught because, as a rule, loyalty has been generated by "push", not "pull", by job title, not mutual identification. The only option at this point is a viable gesture of sufficient magnitude to replace the artificial support--and quickly--with a tangible, sustainable, coherent narrative. You shoulder blame and put the mess into a salvageable, believeable context--with a defined, grown-up performance penalty tied to you. If you value what's left of your rep, you have two choiices: A very human, but not pitiful mea culpa, followed by a lot of work. Or you leave.