On August 17, 2009, President Obama addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars:

“But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is a — this is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

This is either true or not true. If true, then winning the war in Afghanistan is fundamental to the defense of the homeland, and there can be no sacrifice too great. Because the last thing we want to be engaged in is a half-hearted, one foot in, one foot out, kind of war. If it is a war of necessity, then there is no question about giving the generals all the troops and equipment and support they need for as long as they need. America’s at war, dammit.

But David Brooks in this morning’s Times just blows past the basic question– do we need to win this war or not? Instead he dwells on Obama’s feelings and his level of determination. Brooks doesn’t believe Obama is really telling us the truth about how he feels about the war. He thinks the president needs to spend some quality time looking at himself in the mirror. “If the president cannot find that core conviction, we should get out now.”

Actually, no. I don’t really care about President Obama’s feelings about the war. I care about his judgment. And if he says we must win this war, then we must win this war. If he’s changed his mind, then we need to have new goals articulated, and we need to achieve them. We can’t just increase or decrease troop levels depending on the president’s serotonin levels.

I do want to know more about what the President means when he says “Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again.” I thought most of those plotters died in the attack, or have been caught or killed since, with the significant exception of Osama bin Laden himself. (How is it that this lunatic, flitting from cave to cave, supposedly on and off dialysis, under constant surveillance from our hundreds of millions of dollars of drones that cruise the area, is able to survive while the comparable uninsured American, during the same time period, has probably suffered the fatal consequences of our patchwork health-care system? Just asking.)

And I’m troubled about the basis for Tom Friedman’s judgment that we really don’t need to win the Afghan war. In the first place, Friedman was such a great champion for the Iraq pre-emptive war and then for repeatedly calling for staying the course “just another six months” that in many circles, six months is now simply referred to as a Friedman Unit. (At last count, the Iraq war, from March 19, 2003 to now has required 19 Friedman Units, soon to be a smooth 20 to 1 error in judgment.)

Now we have a new Friedman measure of progress in the world, from a column this week. Progress is now to be measured by “when a key player in the Middle East actually does something that puts a smile on my face.” Oh Oracle of Delphi, how far we’ve fallen! Somehow the idea that I’m going to be spending the rest of my life peering into that Friedman mustache trying to find traces of a smile makes me, how to put this delicately, have flashes of driving the big white bus.

Friedman blows past the basic question of whether or not we must win this war to keep America safe. Friedman gets the big questions completely backward: the real question seems to be not must we win, but how hard will it be to win: “We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan.” So under Friedman’s logic we wind down the Afghan war even it means the possible destruction of America. Since it’s too hard to win. Gee, Tom. WWII was hard, too.

And that kind of logic ought to be enough to lower everyone’s serotonin levels.

My mother was a live book reviewer in Cleveland, an activity that seems to have gone the way of the traveling magic lantern lecture tent show. Fortunately for Mom, the traffic lights in our community were exceedingly slow, and she always had a book by her side. We joked that she had completed War and Peace just by judicious use of her time at red lights.

Book reviewers were prime entertainment at women’s organizations until somewhere around the late 1960s, possibly replaced by book clubs where everyone was supposed to actually read the book for themselves. Until then, the job of the book reviewer was to bring the ideas in important books to life for a whole community, to put it into context, to enrich the listener. The expectation that most of the audience would rush out and purchase the book, as Oprah’s audience does today, was not there. With a good book reviewer, you didn’t need to do any stinking page turning yourself. Read more…

You’re third in line for takeoff, finally ready to depart La Guardia and get to your lunch meeting in Chicago. The pilot comes on the P.A. for a last-minute cheery message: “Thanks for your patience. We hope to make it up one we’re in the air and get you to O’Hare on time. Or at least someplace not too far from there. We’re thinking maybe Gary or Indianapolis. As the President says, we shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the essential. So wish us luck.”

What if that were acceptable? What if we never got where we were hoping to go, and it was okay?

What are the implications when President Obama tells us that part of his philosophy is, “We shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the essential?” Sounds reasonable, in a way. Don’t want to be a perfectionist about everything. Wouldn’t be realistic. Never get anything done. Got to compromise, make a deal. Make progress of some kind.

I’m not so sure about throwing the perfect overboard. Read more…

I don’t idealize a great many people that I’ve known, but Richard Maddy is an exception. A violin maker, legendary string instrument rebuilder, WWII paratrooper, and son of the founder of Interlochen Center for the Arts, I met Richard when we were both serving on the alumni board of the organization his father had founded. When the board would get bogged down in the minutiae and politics of whatever problem had wound its way around us, Richard was always there to remind us what we supposed to be doing. He would ask, in some form or another, “Is it good for the kids?” Read more…

You turn on the radio, and someone is giving an opinion about something that’s currently in the news. How long does it take for you decide whether or not that person might have something important to say?

You’re in a meeting at work and a person from another department, someone you haven’t met before, has joined the meeting. When they finally speak, how long will it take for you to make a judgment about their knowledge, their communication skills, and even their intelligence?

In a previous post we discussed the simple appearance of intelligence. We can give an impression of smarts just by holding ourselves a certain way, and by making steady eye contact. If we’re naturals, or if we’ve been practicing, so far so good. Read more…

We all know that the world treats you better if you’re good-looking. Tall is helpful, too. Tall men make more money than short men. They are more likely to become CEOs. They are seen as not only more powerful, but more intelligent.

Do you care if people see you as intelligent? If you do, then you might want to practice a few simple things that can make it more likely that people will grock you as smart. Let’s start with posture. If you occupy your clothes as if they’re still on a hanger, you’ll look as if you’re tired. And if you look tired, people will think you’re generally sleepy-headed. When you’re sitting either at a table or at your desk, you’ll want to practice being compact in your body, legs and arms neatly arranged. Sprawl means disorganized, and unless you’re already certified as a genius, sprawl means you can’t find what you need when you need it, either on your desk or in your head. Read more…

A few weeks ago I posted an open letter to GM CEO Fritz Henderson on the first day of GM’s entering into bankruptcy protection, offering my concern that Mr. Henderson’s reliance on great GM design to save the company might be a problem since GM had put so much ugly tin on America’s roads. I also noted that GM’s culture needed to change, and this was their last chance to get it right. I didn’t mention that most experts on corporate change say it requires 3 — 5 years to accomplish, if you know what you’re doing.

In an amazing display of exactly what I was talking about, Mr. Henderson tossed my article over the fence and assigned the response to Global VP for all design, Ed Welburn, who wrote a public letter back to “Gerald Sindell of the Huffington Post,” which contained an impassioned defense of GM design, and the thousands of artists and modelers at work around the clock around the world creating beautiful new GM cars. Mr. Welburn invited me to visit GM dealerships, look at and drive the new Chevys, Buicks and Cadillacs. I was also invited to visit to global design headquarters in Detroit and see for myself. Read more…

The Genius Machine has gotten more than its fair share of great reviews. I don’t post them since they can be found easily. But one came in today, written by Wayne Hurlbert, that is the very model of conciseness.

“This book is about a third kind of thinking, one that is directed toward improving an existing idea, thinking through a complete issue, or creating something new,” writes Thought Leaders International founder Gerald Sindell, in his powerful guide to creative thinking and idea development The Genius Machine: The 11 Steps That Turn Raw Ideas into Brilliance. The author presents a brilliant eleven step system that creates, develops, and completes the idea building process with simplicity and elegance.

Read more…

I remember many happy times in First Class. I remember when they used to print your name on matchbooks and they’d be miraculously waiting at your seat when you sat down. I remember First Class on Air Canada when they rolled a huge slab of gravlax down the aisle and sliced you off a little, accompanied by a shot of cold vodka. And I remember when the FAA was the real cop of airline safety. They didn’t let anybody get away with anything.

Everyone who cares about zero tolerance for error pays extremely close attention when an airliner goes down. Read more…

Good morning Mr. Henderson —

Big day for you, no question. My best wishes go out to you on Day One running the new General Motors. Clean slate, pretty much, except for those legacy issues that might hold you back. A culture of poor vision, poor design, poor assembly, poor service. That’s a lot to change all at once, but you’ll need to do it. At your press conference you said the new GM would be bringing to the market, among other things, great design. That really struck me. I wondered what your process would be for inspiring, creating and recognizing great design. And how could a passion for great design be inculcated into the culture on a permanent basis? Read more…