During this Democratic Primary season, the DNC, namely their chairman, Howard Dean, has a leadership role with the committee members in not only shaping the Democratic Party but to bring the nomination to closure at the Democratic National Convention. Those leaders of the DNC are also responsible for a lot more leading up to the general election. Leadership is about leading but those responsible for leading at the DNC failed the voters in Michigan and Florida when they penalized those states for early primaries.
In the case of Florida, a Republican governor and Republican controlled state legislature was responsible for making the decision to move the states primary early and the DNC fell for the trap and penalized the Florida voters. Because of a lack of leadership at the very beginning, the DNC rules committee had to meet this weekend and made a decision of what to do about Michigan and Florida. That decision will not satisfy the voters in those two states and it remains to be seen how that will affect the voters in the general election.
The second area of leadership failure falls to Obama. He and his supporters have already made him the nominee of his party and he has already started his campaign for the general election. However, he has recently let Senators McCain and Graham squeeze him. Those two Republican senators told the public Obama needs to go to Iraq to see what is going on. And sure enough, Obama jumped at the bait and his camp announced he would be going to Iraq. Once again, the Republicans are controlling the debate on Iraq. Does any member of congress, much less a candidate for President, really have to go to Iraq to discover that we still have 150,000 American troops there over WMD that did not exist? If Obama can be manipulated that easily and he is the Democratic nominee, the party and the nation are in trouble. A lack of experience equals a lack of leadership. And leadership is about leading, not following.
