The post of this week is another text about politicians. We have to know how to choose well who will govern our city or our country, because after, our regret will be costly for us and for our children. The people must take care at the election time, but after as well, following the elected and demanding a productive and good job. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at https://siyli.org/what-is-leadership-what-makes-good-leader/. The second was published in August of 2016 at http://www.governing.com/gov-institute/funkhouser/gov-depression-politics.html, The third was published in October of 2015 at https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/23/why-the-victims-of-personal-tragedy-often-make-better-politicians/?utm_term=.1af83137ae41. The fourth was published at ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician
There are many definitions of leadership. One great definition is: "Leadership is the art of leading other to deliberately create a result that would not happened otherwise." It is not just the creation of results that makes good leadership. Good leaders are able to deliberately create challenging results by enlisting the help of others. What makes a good leader? Here are some of their most important characteristics: 1) Self-Awareness - You have an intimate knowledge of your inner emotional state. You know yourself, including your capabilities and your limitations, which allows you to push yourself to your maximum potential. 2) Self-Direction - You are able to direct yourself effectively and powerfully. You know how to get things done, how to organize tasks and how to avoid procrastination. You know how to generate energy for projects. You can make decisions quickly when necessary, but can also slow to consider all the options on the table. 3) Vision - You're working towards a goal that is greater than yourself. 4) Ability to Motivate - Leaders do not lead by telling people what they have to do. Instead, leaders cause people to want help them. A key part of this is cultivating your own desire to help others. When others sense that you want to help them, they in turn want to help you. 5) Social Awareness - Understanding social nerworks and key influencers in that social network is another key part of leadership. 6) Emotional Intelligence - Leaders with high E.I. are intrinsically more self-aware. They understand their mental processes and know how to direct themselves. They naturally care more for other and receive more compassion in return.
The social stigma of depression has increased over the last several decades. Abraham Lincoln had many crises in his life, in fact his chronic depression was widely recognized. He took no pains to hide his moods. He viewed his condition, as Joshua Wolf wrote in his book, "Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled his Greatness." as part of the natural world, to be studied, understood, and when possible, managed. I have never read that Lincoln's enemies saw his depression as a weakness to be exploited. But somewhere along the way that changed. Depression have been stigmatized and hidden away, especially by those who aspire to positions of leadership. The irony of all this is that an argument can be made that, as Joshua and others believe was true for Lincoln, being depressed can actually make you a better leader. These concurrent crises are complex, but there are at least two things a politician can do. First, recognized the need to build opportunities for people to connect with one another and develop a sense of community and cohesion. Second, lead the way in destigmatizing depression.
Ken Mehlman, who managed George Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, once observed that voters size up presidential candidates based not on their policy prescriptions but in terms of their characters and "attributes." The attribute I am referring to is, for lack of a better term, personal suffering, or the politics of grief. Grief matters in politics, and not because it makes a candidate more effective. Grief matters because it can serve as the source of public empathy and political authenticity, counteracting and becoming a tonic for much of the cynism that continue to corrode politics. Personal grief has defined and shaped the approach to public affairs of some of our most iconic politicians, including president Franklin D. Roosevelt, senator Robert Kennedy and presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. The grief politicians experienced often became source of fuel for their work ethic and public achievements. It is hardly armchair psychoanalysis to assert a link between politicians' enduring private pains and righting wrongs in the public arena as a way to compensate for such pain. The pattern has deep roots in our politics. Former three-term N.Y. mayor Fiorello La Guardia lost his infant daughter and his first wife to tuberculosis in 1921, and the adversity lent his politics a fierce focus. In addition, their deaths, caused by a disease typically spread in the city's tenements, crystallized for him the distinction between the wealthy with access to sanitation and those forced to live on the margins, more susceptible to the diseases and poverty's hazards. His suffering helped make him a authentic politician. La Guardia became a workaholic and a champion of underprivileged New Yorkers. His private grief formed his capacity to empathize with ordinary citizens' hardships. Two of his contenporaries, Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, similarly found their public calling partly as a direct result of their personal suffering. As a young girl, Eleanor lost her parents, including one to alcoholism. As a young married couple in 1909, the Roosevelts lost their newborn son with a heart condition to influenza. Eleanor described her very public work as the best antidote she knew for her private grief, and her pain deepened her already capacious symphathy for others' plight. In 1921, Franklin D. Rooselvelt contracted polio and began using a wheelchair, giving this leader an uncanny ability to grasp and articulate the pain felt by millions of citizens amid the broader suffering inflicted by the Great Depression. Personal tragedies enable much of the public to regard their leaders, who have suffered so, as vulnerable, ordinary people with uncommon reservoirs of resiliency and humanity. Ronald Reagan's alcoholic father, as Reagan suggested in his memoirs, was somebody he felt impelled to help, a parable of a citizen who aids those in their hour of need. Similarly, Clinton reflected that his father's death in a car accident powered his political ambitions, framing his life's work. Losing his father made the president feel "that I had to live for two people" and that his future achievements "somehow could make up for the life he should have had." There is no way to quantify or compare suffering among various politicians. And just because a political leader suffers does not magically transform him or her into an authentic, more empathic tribune for the hopes and setbacks experienced by millions of ordinary citizens. Yet, looking at the 2016 field, it is hard not to notice that few of our political leaders have suffered as much as the vice president Joe Biden has. Most have lived charmed lives. The media's interest on his candidacy, rest upon a sense that he was unusually well-qualified to grasp ordinary people's fears, hardships and daily struggles.
A politician is a person active in politics. In democratic countries, politicians seek elective positions within a government through elections or, at times, temporary appointment to replace politicians who have died, resigned or have been removed from office. Politicians propose, support and create laws or policies that govern the land and, by extension, its people. Broadly speaking, a politician can be anyone who seeks to achieve political power in any bureacratic institution. Numerous scholars have studied the characteristics of politicians, comparing those at the local and national levels, and comparing the more liberal or the more conservative ones, and comparing the more successful and less successful in terms of elections. In recent years, special attention has focused on the distinctive career path of women politicians. Many critics attacks politicians for being out of touch with the public. Areas of friction include the manner in which politicians speak, which has been described as being overly formal and filled with many euphemistic and metaphorical expressions and commonly perceived as an attempt to "obscure, mislead, and confuse".
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