issue43【clover】 by mintsh

mintshUID: 2460474

TOPIC: ISSUE43 - "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."

Are the highest ethnical and moral standards the must for an effective leader? First, people have not yet reached a consensus on the definition of the highest ethnical principles. Second, the reason why we need a leader is that we hope he/she could shoulder the duty of his position to maximize the public interests. It does not necessarily mean to maintain highest moral standards.

Now that each leader is appointed to execute the power of their own position to do good to the masses and even to larger scope-their nations, the highest moral standards seem to be beyond boundaries among nations and they require meditating on interests of the whole world. Unfortunately, some affairs are the so-called zero-interest games in which one side benefits from another's loss. To a leader from a nation, it is hard for him to consider the interests of humankind before a new policy is put forward. And every nation would possibly confront this kind of issues. For instance, the OPEC, an alliance comprised by several mid east countries to defend their profits on exporting oil. Should one of the nations join the organization? If the leader chooses to join it to boost its income from exportation, is it just to regard him as not qualified seen from his promotion in forming a monopoly which impedes other nations' interest? The answer is uncertain for people are divided over how to respond because of different stances. For citizens of that country, they will speak highly of their leader's performance while others may condemn on its destruction of liberal economy system. In most of the cases, an official is working effectively while measures he takes contradict with the highest moral standards.

However, certain ethnic should be obeyed strictly to guarantee a telling leadership. Where there is power, there is some ambition and desire derived from it. Aside from laws aimed at supervising on officials, also useful would be some extra moral criteria. Some behaviors do not offend laws but they truly have buried detriment in the long run. In China or perhaps some other nations as well, a phenomenon is familiar to the masses that leaders will endeavor to achieve as much success as possible just a few years before retirement in order to elevate his reputation and political feat. It sounds no big deal at first glance, while in fact, the government has occupied limited resources to invest on the projects which might not facilitate sustainable development, instead, will raise certain indicators such as GDP in a short time. The resources on these projects are thus wasted rather be made full use of if our leaders are visionary to value the public interest above his feat. In this case, moral standards are necessary to keep an effective leadership.
        

To clarify, it is pivotal to differentiate public duty from privacy when we judge a leader's achievements. A leader must be responsible for public duty and practicing every step through job process in a legal way. Besides, to ensure not being confused by superficial accomplishments, it is vital for leaders to keep public interests in mind during their political careers. Nonetheless, leaders' own privacy shall be granted as much space as ordinary people possess. No one in the world is perfect; the only perfect one might be God. Hence, we tolerate leaders for their defects in their private life to the degree that it will not determine his qualification to fulfill his position. Set Clinton for example, his love affair has been a controversial issue for past years. Admittedly, he failed to act as a qualified husband, despite this flaw in his marriage; his achievements in the term of office were undeniable. The ten years since he came into power was proven the most prosperous period for economy of the US. Furthermore, Clinton contributed to amending plenty of relationships with countries and establishing a positive figure of US in the international stage. Meanwhile, George W. Bush, whose private life during the term of office was seldom denunciated, can hardly make a patch against Clinton. This indicates that a boundary lies between public duty and privacy and thus public duty’s association with privacy is challenged. Deviant behaviors weighed by ethnic standards sometimes do not virtually affect effective leadership.
In short, I approve of the assertion at the viewpoint that ethnic standards of certain degree are required to eschew malfeasance in exercising rights. After all, no leader is ever able to maintain highest moral standards owing to the interest group he stands for. Moreover some deviation against ethnic is allowed in terms of efficient leadership.