[GretchenM]

There are people on FR who are, as I said, trying to kill off the effectiveness of good leaders through death by a thousand cuts. It's one thing to post an article that points out where Bush or Cheney or Rice or etc. does something less than stellar. It's quite another to follow the post with such tripe as, "This confirms ... my rapidly falling opinion of Bush and Gonzales." And that is the point I made in my post.

[GSlob]

Well, being a good leader is not a position one could hold by any right - there's no tenure or freehold in it. One could be a good leader only on a minute-to-minute basis. Since 2001 the "good leadership" streak in the current administration shows visible ebbing.
Besides, what is leadership? Management? - then Jimmy Carter was a great leader, he managed even the tennis courts. So it is emphatically not management. Then what are the functions unique to leadership? Is it delegation? - nope. Managers do it all the time. The unique function of leadership is purely psychological - inspirational in nature. The quality of charisma comes very close. A good leader manages to project the wishes and aspirations of others [many others] into himself and becomes an inspirational symbol, similar to a carved dragonhead on Viking longboats. That dragonhead was always pointing in the direction the boat sailed, and did not have much in terms of other functions.
That's why Ronald the Great was "the Great". The nitty-gritty of his actual accomplishments is purely secondary. But he gave the country a measure of self-assurance - a purely psychological attainment. The rest of it followed.
So, returning to the present crop of "leaders", it could be seen with unaided eye that they come woefully short.