[April 25, 2017] If someone was to write a book on how to fail as a senior leader, then it must include the U.S. politician Hillary Clinton as the definitive example. Her loss to Donald Trump, who was considered a weaker candidate, is not just about a failure to garner votes against a non-political opponent, it’s everything about how not to be a good leader.
I first met Hillary Clinton in May 1999 at Fort Dix, New Jersey in the middle of our mission to receive, house, feed, and care for over 4,000 Albanian refugees from war-torn Kosovo. She was scheduled to meet the first planeload of refugees at noon. I was just a junior operations officer helping run the mission. I had little to say but when Clinton was over two hours late on her scheduled visit, I recommended that the refugees be sent to their base housing. The recommendation was denied.1 After her tardiness, I was no fan.
Hubris, paranoia, self-righteousness, overconfidence, lack of purpose, lying, double-talk, and passing the buck are all traits of the worst kind of leaders. They are all indicative of Hillary Clinton. A new book just published (one that is sympathetic to her) confirms that her two campaigns to become president were her failures for these very reasons.
What will certainly become a national bestseller, Jonathan Allen and Arnie Parnes are the authors of a telling book about Clinton. Their book, “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign” is textbook on “how to fail” as a senior leader. In this behind-the-scenes account of Clinton’s last campaign for the U.S. presidency it tells about the massive failure that wasn’t seen by anyone inside her campaign until it was too late.
Hillary Clinton herself is to blame. Her fondness for blaming others, distorting priorities, and spirit crushing style is synonymous with failure. Yet she had the money, the political machine, the “right gender,” and she was also considered the favorite to win the presidency easily; every one predicted it and the media fostered it. This is what failure looks like from the inside. See some of my comments on why her campaign was faltering (see link).
I’ve not yet read the book but from previous reports, it will be a blockbuster. The inside scoop on the massive failures of her campaign and her personal leadership failures should have been corrected early in the campaign. Those who spoke up were either fired or marginalized. This is a classic and will be studied in political science courses for many decades. As leaders, we should read it.
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1. Hillary Clinton was the wife of the President of the United States and every accommodation, I was told, would be made to adhere to her wishes. Showing up late, hours late, she was characteristically unapologetic and oblivious to the impact. By that time the refugees had been sitting in a makeshift processing center waiting for her they were throwing up their lunch, sleeping on wooden bleachers, and trying to keep from passing out in a hot and stuffy atmosphere. That made an impression on me that I never forgot. My read was that she didn’t care about the refugees … years later I had that confirmed.
My observation is you can’t have this both ways. You can’t say states and cities who want to toughen policies (e.g. Arizona) are prohibited because immigration is strictly the purview of the federal government; but on the other hand say states and cities can loosen policies by being “sanctuary cities” and shield people from the federal immigration enforcement.