The presidency of the United States is not so much a job as it is an unspeakably daunting combination of roles: diplomat, lawyer, motivational speaker, military commander, and at times everything in between. But at its core, the presidency is about managing information—facing the endless data stream that is the United States government, and translating it into one high-stakes decision after another.
As Barack Obama prepares to do that work for four more years, he can take comfort in being able to tap some of the smartest people in the world to tell him what he needs to know. Figuring out how to actually distill and digest that information, however, is a different matter entirely, and one that everyone who has held the White House in modern times has struggled to deal with.
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Please, can we stop adding "in-chief" to the cutsie headlines? It stopped being amusing four years ago.
This article shines a welcome light on one of the major challenges of the modern-day presidency: “access to information.” My. Neyfakh is correct in observing that the enormous responsibility inherent the 21st century presidency virtually ensures that the sitting president “will never know enough” to govern effectively. I would offer in addition that the refusal (or inability, if one is willing to allow a bit of naiveté) of governmental departments and agencies to share information with other departments and agencies plays a key role in this dilemma. In my own profession of public relations, “free flow of information” and “disclosure of information” play a crucial role in open, honest, and effective communication…which leads to successful accomplishment of goals and objectives. My PR students at Curry College hear this from me from Day One, and they take my caution to heart as budding future professionals. Would that our current government “professionals” could heed this advice.