Between me and the President, there is no anatomical difference. He has an ear with an external lobe to collect information and pass on to the middle ear for processing as one of the myriad miraculous marvels of the human body. But it is only in anatomical features that we share a common platform with him. In all other functions we are poles apart. Besides listening to and deciphering accurately what is being told him he needs to be able to hear what the speakers are leaving behind and what they have also doctored either to please or unwittingly exploit him. He needs an Orwellian ear that can hear everything at every time everywhere. The decision he makes based on the information he is given is crucial for the wellbeing of the state. In that kind of scenario he is both highly privileged and miserably deposed in one breath.

To be the President of the Republic one does not need impeccable academic credentials in political science, international relations or economics. No one alone can be a roundhouse depository of knowledge needed to run the State. All it takes is the wherewithal to market yourself and get the people to accept you as you are in the first place. And then you will have to cultivate a circle of advisers and cohorts to prosecute the mandate. On that basis you have people from all walks of life being presidents who must show more than primordial understanding in medical, political, financial, international, social and military matters. How did Ronald Reagan, a film actor, rule America for two successful terms and at his departure leave the Americans asking for more of him? How does a person like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mayor of California, also a former film actor, grapple with the current global stock market blow out for example? Someone must sit down with him and explain it to him in words of one syllable so that he can make an informed decision that will benefit his constituency. But who is this person and to what extent can he absolutely be trusted?

It is the year 2001 President George Bush Jnr. has just won a controversial election that threatened his legitimacy and broadside acceptance as the President of the United States of America. While savouring what the presidency was all about, 19 Moslem terrorists hijacked four American civilian planes, turned them into missiles in a suicide mission and attempted to hit the heart of American pride with electrum vengeance. They succeeded in a large measure in explosively denting the confidence of the American people and shaking the intelligence and security apparatus of this unipolar power to the core. Doing nothing was not an option; the hurt, the scale and expanse of it and its portent for the future defied any pussy footed or laissez faire approach to the matter. America must hit hard at the identified perpetrators, if for nothing at all, to prevent a recurrence to this monumental and unprecedented mortification and shit smearing of its global stature. But who and what are they? This is not a business in which you press the panic button, follow the feelings in your bones, jerk up when your wife has good dreams or hit at random because you have the resources to do so. To retaliate convincingly and effectively you must be point direct accurate and that means your sources of the information must be doubtless. Multi sourced intelligence all indicated that the crime was perpetrated by the Osama Bin Laden terrorist network with operational bases in Afghanistan. That conclusion was as easy as ABC because they did not care about covering their tracks and it was their privilege and mission objective to give the widest publicity to their achievements. The United States mobilized a coalition of likeminded States and invaded that country with results that you can all see. The formal ending of that retaliatory war was the beginning of the war on terror. Next in line was Iraq, a global military tower in the Middle East, that suspiciously had weapons of mass destruction that could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and threaten the United States and her allies. She was as determined to bring Iraq to order as much as Iraq was determined to be obstructive. It was an affair in which no quarter was given and none taken. It was a gridlock but one party had to give and it had to be Iraq as she was ranged against the world led by Britain and the United States. This time, however, the case for military action was not as clear to the allies as it was in Afghanistan. Convinced by his advisers that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction with roots dating back to Operation Desert Storm of 1990, that he could deploy on an unsuspecting world at anytime, and armed with satellite photographs and other intelligence data, President Bush dug deep into his diplomatic and political repertoire to galvanise support from home and abroad for the invasion of Iraq. The capitals of the world began to erupt and cascade with unprecedented and coordinated mass street demonstrations opposing the invasion for days. Only President Bush and his advisers were convinced about the evidence they had to attack Iraq. This is where a president as the team leader is very vulnerable. He has to rely on information fed to him by his advisers and specialists. Even if he so desired, he still has no means to cross check or otherwise dispassionately evaluate the information as presented to him. He must believe what they have told him because they are the experts on the ground and he must trust them and their systems. It just happened in this case that the summary of the evidence against Iraq as presented to the President came from, and you are not going to believe this, the thesis of a graduating student. No amount of dissuasion could prick the President to see otherwise. Full steam to war he went with the objective of removing Saddam Hussein from power. In the end that objective was achieved but replacing war with peace is taking place at a great cost to human and material resources.

It is the hallmark of a good leader to be resolute and definite in the decision he makes, like a football referee who has to award a 90th minute penalty as the last kick of an emotionally charged cup final match. No matter how high are the stakes once he has arrived at the decision he cannot change it. Timing, emotions, politics and other extraneous considerations are of no consequence here. The decision is made absolutely on its crystallized merit.

I have to admit that President George Bush showed all the signs of a well informed, courageous and decisive leader who could keep a cool head in the face of unprecedented odds globally especially from his NATO bed mates such as France. It looked like there was going to be a split in NATO because Bush  and Blair could not wait for a Security Council endorsement to attack  while others felt the mission should be legitimized by the Security Council. It was then a question of timing and not the need for the enterprise. While George Bush was all over building consensus President Chirac of France was also globetrotting establishing that the case against Iraq had not been made. President Saddam Hussein may have committed atrocities and Iraq may have been sponsoring international terrorism, but the issue of the stock piling of weapons of mass destruction was a very grey area that needed further examination at that time.

To arrive at an informed decision, as opposed to the best decision, a manager has to go through the mechanics of management decision making. He must consult all stake holders, assemble and synthesize all the facts in order to be able to place each issue in its right perspective and address it appropriately.  

Locally our President has survived and executed his mandate very well through a number of very challenging situations in which he has had to rely on advisers. From the early days of Sahara oil deals, through Hotel de waawa, to the murder of the YaNa and forty others, to urban decongestion exercises, appointment of DCEs and other political operatives,  the energy crisis, the NHIS,  GHANA 2008, creation of new districts and their capitals, flag bearer ship contests, disappearance of 77 parcels of cocaine from State  custody, the Haruna Esseku debacle that threatened State security, I am out of breath enumerating the issues, but in how many of the affairs of State does the President have the benefit of the full unalloyed facts, fair and square, from his advisers upon which to make his decisions?

We saw from the NPP flag bearer ship contest that all the aspirants have been willy-nilly confidants of the President. Will they at all times have passed information on to the President or directed him in any manner that could have threatened or compromised their ambition? In those sorts of circumstances it is difficult to see how an ambitious politician can decouple his personal interest from his professional delivery. If the President then has no way of accessing another opinion or evaluating the information that has been fed to him, his stand is very shaky indeed. Eventually it boils down to who watches the watchman. If the recent stormy happenings within Interpol indicate anything, they are an index as to how trust alone cannot constitute an entreport to the Presidents sacred ear. The head of Interpol is assigned to investigate a crime and then he himself becomes embroiled in it.

Being a Presidential Adviser goes beyond the matter of trust; neither does it subscribe to mechanical checks and balances. It will remain a fluicy situation ebbing and flowing all the time but still critically dependent on the strained veracity of information reaching the ear of the President.

If the intelligence networks and academic institutions advising decision makers in the advanced countries can be thrown off tangent or be so grossly deficient then God help those states with reduced or infantile resources.

A new President will soon be sworn in to direct the affairs of State for the next four years. We should all be concerned with what he hears, who tells it to him and what decisions he makes based on what he has heard.