Presidential Comparison

Presidential Comparison
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Two of United States’ most successful presidents, George W Bush and Barrack Obama, used different leadership styles in their respective terms. The aim here, therefore, is to analyze and discuss their leadership styles, compare their styles using behavioral and trait theories of leadership and discuss a single crisis each of them dealt with. For instance, it will be clear by the end of the essay why President Obama is a transformational leader while Bush was a transactional leader (Genovese, Belt, & Lammers, 2014). Most importantly, their respective leadership styles are compared to two groups of behaviors discussed in behavioral theory. Understanding why President Bush was task-oriented while President Obama is people-oriented is of essence too in this essay. In the processes, their various achievements and crisis they had to deal with will be discussed.
President Bush demonstrated transactional leadership in that he emphasized on putting effort and then profiting from the outcomes. For that reason, Bush seemed very good at dealing with presenting issues. In addition, President Bush was also a decisive leader. In most case, he illustrated that style for example in his decision to go to war with Iraq (Greenstein, 2003). Nevertheless, in other situations such as the North Korea policy, he let things deteriorate and pushed difficult situations to the future. Most of his admirers saw him as a leader who would ask his advisers harsh and probing question.

Also, he was a person who never looked back once he picked his goal. Valenty & Feldman (2002) suggest that despite the fact that he was a big-pictured leader, and never got bogged down in details, he was intellectually indolent.
Although it is already mentioned above that President Obama used cultural sensitive and transformational leadership style, it should be clear that he used other situational styles too. If you think about his style from that perspective, you realize that he modeled what is referred to as contingency leadership. According to Genovese, Belt, & Lammers (2014), Obama was conciliatory, humble and apt when travelling abroad and would listen before speaking. During his campaign, his use of “hope and change” showed a potential transformational leader. He was very clear that the economy of the country was badly weakened. In his words he said it is “a consequence of greed and irresponsibility” (Valenty, & Feldman, 2002). Obama only entrusted highly qualified people with responsibilities.
George W Bush was a task oriented leader. From the behavioral theory, it is clear that these kinds of leaders focus their behavior on the administrative structure and working procedure. Evidently, Bush, unlike Obama, was a president who liked to keep control. However, being task-oriented doesn’t mean these leaders are not people-oriented at all. President Bush would listen to people’s opinion and focused on their motivation too, but it was not his major concern (Scouller, 2011). Like most other task-oriented leaders, he would favor behaviors involving initiating, organizing, clarifying and gathering information. He also portrayed some of the leadership traits explained in the trait leadership theory. These traits include outgoingness, self-confidence and height. The theory argues that there are particular inborn traits common in all leaders (Rahim, 2011). It is worth noting the identified traits are distinctive but the most common ones are intelligence, determination and integrity.
By relating Obama’s leadership style to the behavioral theory, we find him to be a people-oriented leader. These are leaders whose behaviors are focused on making sure the inner needs of their followers are satisfied. Rahim (2011) asserts that Obama would stop at nothing to see Americans are motivated as he would accentuate on the human relation. Notably, these leaders still focus on tasks and results only that they attain them through different ways. For this reason, we relate that to the fact that people-oriented leaders like Obama have behaviors that are in line with inspiring, discerning, listening and mentoring. On the other hand, Obama depicted all the leadership qualities discussed in the trait theory of leadership. Other additional traits include scrupulousness and openness to experience. In other words, these traits show that individuals emerge as leaders across a number of situations and tasks.
One of the worst crises during Bush’s time was hurricane Katrina. The disaster did not only show the victims’ and first responders’ willpower and courage but also illustrated the danger that a president faces when he fails to deal with such a calamity efficiently and on time. During this crisis, Bush did not pay enough attention to the biggest news story as he was on vacation (Scouller, 2011). After cutting his vacation short after 29 days of exile, he did not visit the devastated area right away. Although the White House aides said the reason was that he never wanted to disrupt the rescue operations, many Americans understood the situation differently. As a matter of facts, it shows and proves that Bush was not people-oriented at all. If he was, he should have been there with the citizen during the crisis.
Obama announced in his speech that he had strategies to degrade and destroy the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). However, his strategy only proves people-oriented and less task-oriented. Very few Americans were enthusiastic or approved the idea of providing military support to rebels in Syria to fight the ISIS. Most Republicans were for sending troops to Syria and Iraq, an idea that was very much opposed by the Democrats (Greenstein, 2003). According to survey, very few Americans have faith in Obama in handling international crisis like the ISIS threat. For this reason, it is clear that he is not as transformational as one would think since Bush too did not handle terrorism the right way. However, comparing the two, Bush’s strategies for fighting terrorism were by far very effective.
References
Genovese, M., Belt, T. & Lammers, W. (2014). The presidency and domestic policy: comparing leadership styles, FDR to Obama. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers.
Greenstein, F. (2003). The George W. Bush presidency: an early assessment. Baltimore, Md. London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Rahim, M. (2011). Diversity, conflict, and leadership. New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers.
Scouller, J. (2011). The three levels of leadership: how to develop your leadership presence, knowhow, and skill. Cirencester: Management Books 2000.
Valenty, L. & Feldman, O. (2002). Political leadership for the new century: personality and
behavior among American leaders. Westport, Conn: Praeger.