Issue43 [天道酬勤小组] 有拍必回^_^

surreal_stevenUID: 2239190

TOPIC: ISSUE43 - "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."
WORDS: 668         

The speaker asserts that the highest ethical and moral standards must be keep in a public official's mind if he or she want to be an effective leader. Is it really the case? In my view, it is important to keep a high ethical and moral standards in an effective public official's mind, however it is not necessary or even impossible to be the highest.

Admittedly, it is essential for any effective leader to always keep in his or her mind the high ethical and moral standards. As the delegate of the party and the people he leads, the leader should always try his best to do the right thing to the people, who elect him to be the leader. And the high standard of ethical and moral is the guarantee especially when his individual interest is conflict with the interest of the entire group as a whole. On the contrary, if a leader has several unethical and immoral weaknesses in his character, such as dishonesty and selfishness etc, he is most likely to give up his bottom line in the face of numerous allurements in the current society. Suppose you are a greedy mayor of a big city, what would you do if facing a $10000000 dollar check from a corporation and being asked to do a little "favor" without the public's supervision? Still reject the project that may be harmful to the environment and the people living in the city or carry out the project of the company with an easy signature and then take the check? It is hard to image a greedy public official would do the former. So we cannot wish a public official with ethical and moral flaws to be a qualified leader, let alone an effective one.

However, it is not necessary for a public leader to maintain the highest ethical and moral standards because sometimes if people pay too much attention to the ethical and moral aspect of the leader, it would limit their ability to lead and govern. The highest standards of ethical and moral is too demanding. Just take the anti-terrorism war started by the president Bush as an example. After the 9.11 event, the president of the United States, Bush, started the anti-terrorism war to fight against the terrorists worldwide. The war can benefit American people and the people all over the world. However, obviously, war would kill many innocent people and even many US soldiers and it is apparently unethical and immoral. If people use this as a excuse to prevent the president from triggering the war, maybe more and more innocent people would be killed by the terrorists and more other event like 9.11 would happen. In short, the highest standards of ethical and moral is not necessary and people should not pay too much attention on such aspect.

Further, the maintaining a highest ethical and moral standard is not practical and even impossible. For one thing, any public leader, no matter how great he or she is, is a normal people. And it is inevitable that any normal people would have some weak points in the character. Then, in fact, the person with the completely highest ethical and moral standards is just a perfect illusion in the Bible, as the guidance of the people in the real world. Another, some highest ethical and moral standards might conflict many people's interests. For example, eating meat is immoral in the so-called highest ethical standards because we have to kill the animal to get the meat. But it is unreasonable that the leader deprive our right to eat meat just because of the moral standards.

In sum, it is necessary for the public leader to keep high standards of ethical and moral in mind in order to be an effective leader. However it is not necessary to be the highest. What we public people need is an effective leader with strong ability to solve the social problem and benefit the people as a whole, not a moralist.