Leaders in the Bubble, and Bubbling Over

Just finished reading an article entitled, "Living Too Much in the Bubble?" in this week's issue of TIME.

Here are a few selected comments and quotes, followed by my own thoughts:

1. [Bush] banks on image as a straight shooter... - It seems the president's credibility has finally started taking some serious hits as neither his Iraq not his Katrina pronouncements sound believable today.
2. ...one of his most trusted confidants calls him "a better third and fourth quarter player..." - This strikes me as a rationalization for  a chronic lack of preparation.  Is it just me, or does the president resemble a smirking frat boy skating through on connections more and more every day?
3. "The extremely highly centralized control of the government--the engine of Bush's success--failed him this time," a key adviser said.  [snip]  Does not tap sources deep inside the government for information... - Highly centralized decision-making without a strong flow of information; sounds to me like a recipe for bad judgments.
4. Five-week ranch stay...keep a balanced life... - See point #2. 
5. Took hours for Governor Blanco to reach Bush...[snip] His inner circle takes pride in being able to tell him, 'everything is under control...' [snip] President's increasing isolation...fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news. [snip] The result is a kind of an echo chamber in which good news can prevail over bad--even when there is a surfeit of evidence to the contrary. [emphasis added] -  Oh, boy.  Here's a set of comments that adds up to a very worrisome circumstance.  Whenever a leader is sending the message that s/he is unwilling to hear bad news, creating a circumstance in which people succeed based on their ability to manage that bad news, you've got trouble; the dreaded echo chamber.  In this instance, it meant keeping the troubled, and maybe troubling, governor, at arms length for hours.
6. "Katrina has shown the incredible weakness of th notion that you can have weak players in key spots because the only people who matter are in the White House," said a lobbyist who is tight with the Administration. "You can't have a Mike Brown at FEMA unless you can guarantee that there isn't going to be a catastrophe." - An awful model, as we saw from Brown's pitiful, pitiful performance. 
7. ...a source told TIME that four kays after Katrina struck, Bush himself briefed his father and former President Clinton in a way that left too rosy an impression of the progress made.  "It bore no resemblance to what whas actually happening," said someone familiar with the presentation. -  An old boss of mine once taught me something very important.  We were running our little mental health center, and preparing to meet with a bunch of county government flacks.  As we started exercising our hyperbole muscles, my boss stopped us and said, "remember, we've got to be careful that we don't start to believe our own bullshit."   Memo to the president:  read the last sentence, very slowly.

Finally, there's this other lesson in leadership: I just received an email from CNET entitled, "Breaking News: Microsoft CEO Vows to "Kill Google."  I'll just include it here in its entirety:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to "kill" Google in an
expletitive-laced, chair-throwing tirade when a senior
engineer told him he was leaving the company to go work
for Google, the engineer claimed in court documents made
public on Friday.

In a sworn statement made public Friday, Mark Lucovsky,
another Microsoft senior engineer who left for Google in
November 2004, recounted Ballmer's angry reaction when
Lucovsky told Ballmer he was going to work for the search
engine company.

"At some point in the conversation, Mr. Ballmer said:
'Just tell me it's not Google,'"Lucovosky said in his
statement. Lucovosky replied that he was joining Google.

"At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it
across the room hitting a table in his office," Lucovosky
recounted, adding that Ballmer then launched into a tirade
about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "I'm going to f***ing bury
that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again.
I'm going to f***ing kill Google." Schmidt previously
worked for Sun Microsystems and was the CEO of Novell.

See, Washington is not the only place in which we have examples of all manner of creative ways to lead poorly.

Whatever became of "graceful?"