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[Obama was] really everything the American public would expect from their national leadership. The President was at all times presidential. I would contend he was the smartest guy in the room. He had leadership skills we'd expect from a guy who had 35 years in the military.
--
William H. McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, describing Obama's work in the May 2 2011 Osama bin Laden operation. Quoted in Time Magazine, December 26, 2011. The Admiral by Barton Gellman

 

Barack Obama

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In The Hidden-Hand Presidency : Eisenhower as Leader, Greenstein attributed part of the public's discontent with presidential performance to the conflict built into the Constitution between the president's apolitical and unifying role as chief of state and his partisan and divisive role as head of government. … Eisenhower was able to bridge the built-in contradictions of the office and provide an effective leadership style. In his analysis of Eisenhower, Greenstein focused on three classes of variables: the personal properties of the man, his leadership strategies, and his organizational style. Eisenhower's political psychology exhibited antithetical qualities in public and private, a duality well suited for adapting to contradictory public expectations. His leadership strategies involved making his job as chief of state readily visible while covertly exercising much of his public leadership. In parallel fashion, his organizational style focused public attention on the formal machinery but left unpublicized his use of informal organization.

 

Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

In 2008, many of Barack Obama’s supporters thought they might be electing another John F. Kennedy. But his recent maneuvers increasingly suggest that they selected another Dwight Eisenhower.
That’s not a comment on President Obama’s effectiveness or ideology, but rather on his conception of presidential leadership. Whether he is confronting the turmoil reshaping the Middle East or the escalating budget wars in Washington, Obama most often uses a common set of strategies to pursue his goals. Those strategies have less in common with Kennedy’s inspirational, public-oriented leadership than with the muted, indirect, and targeted Eisenhower model that political scientist Fred Greenstein memorably described as a “hidden hand” presidency.
This approach has allowed Obama to achieve many of his domestic and international aims — from passing the health reform legislation that marked its stormy first anniversary this week to encouraging Egypt’s peaceful transfer of power. But, like it did for Eisenhower, this style has exposed Obama to charges of passivity, indecisiveness, and leading from behind. The pattern has left even some of his supporters uncertain whether he is shrewd — or timid.
On most issues, Obama has consciously chosen not to make himself the fulcrum. He has identified broad goals but has generally allowed others to take the public lead, waited until the debate has substantially coalesced, and only then announced a clear, visible stand meant to solidify consensus. He appears to believe he can most often exert maximum leverage toward the end of any process — an implicit rejection of the belief that a president’s greatest asset is his ability to define the choices for the country (and the world).
To the extent that Obama shapes processes along the way, he tends to do so offstage rather than in public. Throughout, he has shown an unswerving resistance to absolutist public pronouncements and grand theories.

 

Barack Obama

 

The tragedy in the long history of the German people is that it has seldom had real leaders. Not that it lacked military leadership. What was lacking was political leadership, the political idea, the Weltanschauung (worldview) that National Socialism gives. The S.A. man as a political soldier is the bearer of this Weltanschauung, this National Socialist idea. Political soldiery is the foundation of the state.

 

Viktor Lutze

 

The American people don’t expect government to solve every problem. They don’t expect those of us in this chamber to agree on every issue. But they do expect us to put the nation’s interests before party. They do expect us to forge reasonable compromise where we can. For they know that America moves forward only when we do so together, and that the responsibility of improving this union remains the task of us all.

 

Barack Obama

 

Fifty years from today, Americans will revere the name, 'Obama.' Because like his Canadian predecessors, he chose the tough responsibilities of national leadership over the meaningless nostrums of sterile partisanship that we see too much of in Canada and around the world.

 

Brian Mulroney