» ISSUE 43 yeer’s blog 生活思考觉悟

Published 23:52 Sunday, June 7th, 2009 by yeer 952 views

ISSUE 43

43、"To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."

Whether a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards to be an effective leader has been a controversial issue for a long time perhaps since the first time human beings select some fortunate guys as their leaders. Although most of voters in domestic societies or subjects in totalitarian regimes wish their leaders as perfect models in all aspects, including ethical and moral ones, many leaders proved to be effective and successful in their terms of office with certain blemishes in regard to ethical and moral standards.

And the standards of social conducts will hardly be in high level if the monarch is extravagant and dissipated. In addition, moral regulations in leaders’ mind constrain from themselves abusing their authorities and are helpful to prevent corruption.

However, the list of effective leaders is starred with famous ones imperfect in terms of ethical and moral standards. Consider President John Kennedy. While he was in deep trouble of extramarital relations rumors, the space race program initialized and nuclear test ban treaty proposed by him in his administration made US the strongest competitor in space exploration and contributed prominently to the peace of world, respectively. What’s more, he has been ranked highly in public opinion among presidents in American history. Bill Clinton is another typical example. He was accused of various sexual affairs and once impeached for obstruction of justice, but the longest period of economic expansion after the Second World War testifies his effective leadership. Or consider an extreme case of Hitler, who framed the notorious ethnic genocide policy towards Jews, which offends basic humanity, let alone highest ethical and moral standards. By contrast, few historians will deny his role as an effective leader in the fields of economy and military. It is during his tenure that German transformed from a weak defeated country of World War I to a super power in Europe in merely a couple of decades. Also his unique military strategy of lighting attack became the nightmare of invaded countries such as Poland, a representative victim of lighting war, which was totally occupied by German troops just in five weeks.

As a matter of fact, there are other factors influencing the effectiveness of a public leader such as insight, creativity, managing skills, affinity to people and so forth. A leader with highest ethical and moral standards but without traits mentioned above will not become an effective one. Overemphasizing on the aspects of ethical and moral standards and ignoring other abilities of a public official will make a moral model rather than an effective leader. Furthermore, a leader can hardly satisfy everyone because the term highest is subjective and varied a lot as far as different individuals are concerned.

In summary, although high ethical and moral standards may help a leader in some situations, the assertion in title statement is arbitrary and superficial for lack of a full consideration of other factors important for an official to be an effective leader.