Issue43【六人作文小组】第3周第4次作业

sneakerliuUID: 2481691

TOPIC: ISSUE43 - "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."
WORDS: 690
TIME: 上午 12:47:05
DATE: 2009-1-22
提纲1，什么是effective leader
2，moral 在effective中起到的作用
3，最高的标准是不可行也不必要的
4，通过社会道德的提高可以提高leader的moral

When running a presidential election campaign, candidates tend to imply to the public that he or she is powerful, decisive, insightful and most fundamentally maintaining a highest moral and ethical standard. That is exactly how the public judges a qualified leader. I personally agree with the public's idea of the political figures, however, not fully agree with the aspect of a highest moral standard for them.

Above all, a vital issue for us to take into consideration is what is an effective leader? Are those lead us out of economic downturn or win the World War against Nazis simply be regarded as effective leaders? The answer is ambiguous. An effective leader should be valued based on whether he or she could make wise decisions with insightful views that benefit the public and whether the decisions are fully implemented by other officials instead of what happened during the presidency, as those may not indicates the leaders’ decisions. Thus, even if the society's situation getting better during one's presidential period, he or she could be a ineffective leader if his or her decisions were not wise enough and been implemented by others.

As for morality, how much does it affect the effectiveness of an official leader? With a compared bad moral standard, one is likely to make unwise decisions to the public but wise ones to oneself. A compared low moral standard commonly, if not always guarantee bribing of a leader. In this respect, even though his decisions are successfully implemented, the public can achieve little positive effects while a loss of taxpayers' money. Additionally, if the leaders' moral standard is a little bit higher than previous, say he would not sacrifice the public's benefits to meet his own benefits, he could also be regarded as ineffective if his moral standard affects his decision been implemented. Bill Clinton was facing to be impeached after his sex scandal with an intern of his office. Though it is a private issue that did not affect his ability to tackle international problems, his decisions are less likely to be implemented as he told lies to the public about his love affairs. People are reasonable to doubt the morality and his political decisions eventually. In this regard, Bill is not an effective leader after his moral standard being challenged.

Furthermore, a lower moral standard of a leader could also affect others' standard as a whole. People tend not to feel guilty about their immoral actions if their leader has done the similar actions, as they believe the leader would sympathize with them to certain degree. However, the lack of high moral standard of the whole government is indeed a disaster to the society. Not only the leader, but the whole society would be an ineffective one.

Admittedly, is that feasible that the leaders maintain a highest moral standard in order to be effective? The highest moral standard may sounds like a utopia but cannot be achieved. No one is perfect as laziness and selfishness are the humanities. And morality is not the sole prerequisite for effective leaders. One should maintain certain energy and time to perfect the minds and broaden the horizon as well in order to be truly effective instead of pursue a utopian moral standard. A compared high morality is enough to maintain an effective leader.

And how the morality of an individual is established should be determined by the society as a whole. According to Social Comparison's ideas, we tend to compare our moral standard with others in the society. And people's moral value system is developed via education and experience of the society. That is to say, if the moral standard of the society as whole increased, the leaders are less likely to maintain low ethnical that lead to ineffective governments. Otherwise, with a very bad moral value system of the society, it is even harder for one to maintain the highest moral standard, and how should we asking the leaders to be of the highest moral standard?In this respect, an immoral society is destined to have ineffective leaders while the morality plays a vital role of the effectiveness of a leader.