Discuss About The Comparing Leadership Quality Trump And Obama.
President is referred as the head of the country and the first person of the state. In countries like USA where the constitutional set up makes the President most powerful, it enables the President to lead the country from the front (Presidents, 2018). In response to that the role and leadership quality of US Presidents are very relevant and imperative to study. The present discussion encircles a comparative study between the former President Barack Obama and the current Head of the State Donald Trump. The primary focus of the report is to address the leadership quality of both the Presidents and make an assessment by analysing different traits of leadership.
The United States of America has a federal set up where all the powers of legislative, executive and judiciary are vested in the hands of President, Senate and federal courts. As a reason of that, President of US enjoys a dynamic power and it requires a serious leadership quality for the President. However, the empirical evidences prove that the former US presidents followed a number of leadership theories from moderate to extremist value. In this regards, ea number of leadership styles will be taken into consideration (Economics). According to the ‘Great Man’ theory, leadership is an inherent talent that the leader has destined since born. The theory also advocates that leadership is meant for the male in the society and thus it incorporates the military leadership as well. Besides this, the Trait theory also perceives the same concept where it can be identified that extroversion, self-confidence are the key feature of trait theory (Uzohue, Yaya & Akintayo, 2016). Moving with the situation is the basic idea of contingency theory where good leaders can be marked out on the basis of their behaviours and decisions on the basis of changing situation (Mittal, 2015). The behavioural theory of leadership referred to the learning process through which people will be elevated as leaders. In response to that the leadership quality of the US presidents subsequently follows any of the theories or sometimes their style of leadership resembles a mixture of different theories. In this regards, the behavioural theory can be considered as the best policy in a democratic country where no such notion of in born talent is considered to be the right way to choose leaders. Rather, the learning process and observation are the key features of making a good leader.
The report will take into account a reflection of the current President of USA, Donald Trump and distinguish between the differences of leadership of Trump with the former President Barack Obama.
While discussing the leadership quality of Barack Obama it can be identified that his style of leadership is very much similar with the notion of Transformational Leadership. According to this leadership, the appearance of a leader is quiet motivational and it can inspire a generation. In relation to Barack Obama’s leadership quality it shows that his engagement with the audience was so robust that it left a good impression on the American people. Another important aspect of the Transformational Leadership is that the leader can motivate his or her followers to follow his path (Street, 2015). In case of President Obama, most of his speeches addressed different class of people from the working class to the business personalities. Moreover, building relationship and trust made him very acceptable to the US people (Dunlap, McCright & Yarosh, 2016).
On the contrary, the current President of America, Donald Trump enjoys a different kind of leadership which contains the traits of high dominance, charisma and influence. These traits have a close affinity with the autocratic principles or the authoritarian ideas. According to this concept, most of the authoritarian leaders come to power through elections but gradually circumscribe the civic liberty in the name of national security (Immelman, 2017). It means the autocratic leaders have a manipulative skill to get maximize vote and after gaining power they are not willing to pursue benevolence. In case of Donald Trump, he also enjoys such kind of leadership quality. Narcissist behaviour leads him to become more dominant and conservative in nature which further heightens the possibility of over confidence. During the electoral process and after getting elected as the US President Trump has violated a number of US regulations. However, he got most of the votes in 2016 Presidential election (Siegel, 2018). The reason behind this victory was his personality and behavioural traits. It can be seen that most of Trump’s leadership quality are very similar to the notion of Trait theory and contingency theory.
It is generally acclaimed that every political leader has their own style of personality and values which is very unique and they set some moral values regarding their personalities. However, in most of the cases the national interest becomes more pivotal than the personality of the leaders. Hence, the political leaders are kept focus on the moral and ethical values rather than their own personalities. In this context, the report is going to discuss difference of attitude between Obama and Trump and the measure by which policy and character are playing the role of a determinant.
Barack Obama became the President of United States in 2009 and had been observed as a phenomenal event which could change the American life. The Chicago Tribune narrated his electoral win as a light of hope which would be able to transform the world perception about America (Roberts, 2015). Obama was also the first African American President which enhanced his acceptability and widen up the global acceptance of USA as a liberal country. Nonetheless, it cannot prove Obama’s acceptance of ethics over personality. In most of his speeches he talked about the moral value and humanitarian approaches towards the world. He transformed the image of US foreign policy from aggressiveness to a saviour in difficult times. The withdrawal of US military from Afghanistan was also a drastic step that enhanced the moral value and helped to shape a firm step in international politics.
However, after the coming of Donald Trump as the President of United States the entire global perception about US has been changed rampantly. Trump is more concerned about his personality rather than morality or national interest. His personal image is so blatant that he vehemently maintains a close contact with the business and rich section of the society (Dorf, 2016). In fact, on the matter of immigration Trump took a drastic step by putting heavy regulations and acts on the immigration policy. It was also been alleged that Donald Trump is a male chauvinist who did not want to give opportunity to a female presidential candidate to hold the leadership of a country. This is a genuine example of authoritarian regime.
The constitution of USA gives so privileges to the President that he or she can achieve great influence in order to amend the constitution. In response to that, it is the responsibility of the President to restore justice and peace across the world.
Ex-President Barack Obama had a deep faith in the US constitution as well as international laws and he was more likely abiding those laws. In order to restore peace, President Obama referred to the international law as a tool to maintain peace and prosperity across the world (Goldsmith, 2016). This attitude of leadership is seemed to be more dedicated to the constitutional edifice and more respectful to the democratic governance. In fact, during the Obama administration sensitive issues like racism or gender discrimination were decreased rapidly (Lundberg et al., 2017). It was the sole championship of Obama and his government that successfully restricted the practice which was prevalent in America for a long time. This quality of government represents a strong obedience to the democratic decorum and not in a mood to perturb the federal structure.
Despite the efforts Obama government had taken, the Trump administration is going to shake the roots of this very establishment. Donald Trump does not resemble any idea of the power of US constitution. In fact, by misusing his power Donald Trump is going to amend the US regulation for citizenship rights. Putting more stress on the immigration policy the Trump government wants to put a ban on other religion especially on Islam (Savoy, 2017). In US, every child born in American soil is being treated as a US citizen, but Trump amend this act and impose more conditions on US citizenship. Hence, it can be argued that an authoritarian idea of power has been identified as the key component of Trump’s use of power.
Communication is considered to be a pivotal factor for influencing the mass. In response to that, it is also important to figure out the diverse method of communication that the political leaders are associated with. In fact, the leaders have to be a good speaker to maximize the support. Moreover, with the advent of social media the dimension of communication has been expanded with a great pace and it reduces the activity of conventional communicative methods.
In this regards, the 2008 presidential campaign had been changed significantly when Barack Obama was going to shoot a YouTube video for publicity (Gerodimos & Justinussen, 2015). Social media is considered to be a useful mechanism that was helping Obama a lot to collect national support. There are a number of methods that the Democratic Party was used for the promotion of Barack Obama. For example, campaign websites, blogs and e-mail promotion played a key role as digital promotion. Furthermore, twitter was also become a part of the Obama’s political campign (Branch, 2016). After getting elected the Democratic Party still continued its promotion through social media.
However, Donald Trump is very comfortable to ventilate his words in public speeches. During the political campaign for presidential election Trump and his party were very much keen about using humorous slogans and pronunciations which would indirectly attack the opponents. Nevertheless, Donald Trump is very much open-minded to share his expression. The Trump administration deliberately follows the strategy of repeating false statements so that the US people will believe it true (Mettomäki, 2017). Therefore, it is beyond any doubt that utilizing the media is a popular practise among political leaders.
Conclusion
Political manoeuvrings and influence are the fundamental principle of politics and the political leaders must have the skill to convince the mass. However, this is just a part of leadership quality. There are plenty of attributes which contribute to the enhancement of leadership ability. Better communicative skill and efforts to convince the popular psyche cannot be the only factors for leadership quality. Good behaviour and moral efficiency are also necessary to be a good leader. Therefore, it can be concluded that leadership quality is very much related to the popular demand and Barack Obama had more powerful leadership quality than Donald Trump.
Reference
Branch, L. (2016). Reexamining the “Obama Effect”: How Barack Obama’s Rhetoric Spread Optimistic Colorblindness in an Age of Inequality. Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 6(3/4), 99-111.
Dorf, M. C. (2016). Donald Trump and Other Agents of Constitutional Change. U. Chi. L. Rev. Online, 83, 72.
Dunlap, R. E., McCright, A. M., & Yarosh, J. H. (2016). The political divide on climate change: Partisan polarization widens in the US. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 58(5), 4-23.
Gerodimos, R., & Justinussen, J. (2015). Obama’s 2012 Facebook campaign: Political communication in the age of the like button. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 12(2), 113-132.
Goldsmith, J. (2016). The contributions of the Obama administration to the practice and theory of international law. Harv. Int’l LJ, 57, 455.
Immelman, A. (2017). The Leadership Style of US President Donald J. Trump.
Lundberg, K. B., Payne, B. K., Pasek, J., & Krosnick, J. A. (2017). Racial Attitudes Predicted Changes in Ostensibly Race?Neutral Political Attitudes Under the Obama Administration. Political Psychology, 38(2), 313-330.
Mettomäki, A. (2017). ” YES WE CAN” OR” MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”: Comparison of representations in Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s inaugural addresses.
Mittal, R. (2015). Charismatic and transformational leadership styles: A cross-cultural perspective. International Journal of Business and Management, 10(3), 26.
Presidents. (2018). www.whitehouse.gov. Retrieved 14 April 2018, from https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/
Roberts, G. E. (2015). TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP IN A POSTMODERN WORLD: THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA. Electronic Business, 14(11).
Savoy, J. (2017). Trump’s and Clinton’s Style and Rhetoric during the 2016 Presidential Election. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 1-22.
Siegel, N. (2018). Political Norms, Constitutional Conventions, and President Donald Trump.
Street, P. (2015). Barack Obama and the future of American politics. Routledge.
Uzohue, C. E., Yaya, J., & Akintayo, O. A. (2016). A review of leadership theories, principles, styles and their relevance to management of health science libraries in Nigeria. Journal of Educational Leadership and Policy, 1(1), 17-26.
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