A Leadership Mistake

White House Memo - The Pros and Cons of Admitting a Presidential Error - NYTimes.com

Since BO has never held a leadership position, he doesn't know much about being a leader and admitting mistakes. Some things that would be immediately asked of a leader in business, or in a country with an adversarial press for Democrats:

1. What was the mistake? He has appointed 4 people with problems, Richards also withdrew, Geithner made it but has tax problems. Why was Daschle worthy of being admitted as a personal presidential error, but the others were not? Why admit this "mistake" now?
   
2. How does he intend to FIX things so the "mistake" doesn't happen again? Is it a "process issue"? Did he just learn that most Americans actually pay their taxes? Has he just learned that he can't get by with a different standard for his people than for the common people? What?
3. Is it REALLY "his mistake", or is it a symptom of the selection pool? Is there a problem that MANY Democrats don't follow the rules, so it is really hard for a Democrat President to find qualified people that can both do the job and have a reasonable history relative to personal life, paying taxes, hiring illegal aliens, etc? It kind of seems that way, it seems very unlikely that BOTH the Clinton and BO administrations could have had and be having as many problems as they are when the supposedly completely incompetent Bush administration had no problems with appointees having to drop out due to legal / personal sorts of issues.
   
4. Why THIS mistake? Any leader of any reasonable sized task knows that "mistakes are made" every day by both the leader and the people they are leading. When a leader admits a mistake, they reflect on the people that hired them (or elected them), the people they lead, themselves, and the processes / procedures / organization that they lead. So, this is a well that BO can't go to very often, or there is going to be a lot of "buyers remorse" going around.
   

It seems that BO maybe ought to check out a book or two on leadership for the weekend. He has never held a leadership position, so some book learning might be able to shorten the on the job training by a bit.