A Characteristically Missed Leadership Opportunity — President Obama’s Failure to Excite the Nation about Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — after NASA’s Extraordinary Demonstration of Genius in All Four with its Mars Curiosity Landing

© 2012 Peter Free

 

15 August 2012

 

 

In the midst of a repulsively negative presidential campaign, one would think President Obama would have seized the opportunity to point to an example of extraordinary American excellence — but, sadly, not

 

President Obama delayed congratulating NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for one week after its Curiosity landing on Mars, which took place on 05 August 2012.

 

His “attaboy” came in the form of a casually drafted, but probably sincere, telephone call to JPL on 13 August.

 

There was no other public stage fanfare that I could find.

 

 

Citation — to audio and text, plus video of JPL staff listening to the President’s telephone call

 

Jim Wilson and Brian Dunbar, President Obama Calls to Congratulate Curiosity Team, NASA (13 August 2012)

 

 

Why the President’s telephoned congratulations fell far short of what a competent (much less gifted) leader would have done

 

First, Curiosity’s Mars landing is one of NASA’s most impressive achievements in decades.  As such, it stands as one of the United States’ most inspiring accomplishments in years.

 

Second, President Obama’s administration has expressed an interest in boosting American educational efforts in science, technology, engineering and mathematics — generally called “STEM.”

 

Yet, when NASA landed Curiosity on Mars on the fifth of August — in a fabulous demonstration of the importance of achieving excellence in all four disciplines to America’s future — the President waited a week to congratulate the thousands of people involved, and he flubbed the wider opportunity to draw inspired national attention to NASA’s example.

 

 

Yes — NASA noticed

 

From the press release:

 

President Obama's call comes a week after Curiosity landed on the Red Planet.

 

Jim Wilson and Brian Dunbar, President Obama Calls to Congratulate Curiosity Team, NASA (13 August 2012)

 

 

On leadership

 

Leaders point our eyes and hearts in the direction we need to go.  They explain the route and motivate the undertaking.

 

The Curiosity landing is a good example of what happens when STEM-illiterate people do not understand the significance of what has happened just under their noses.  Almost certainly, only persons familiar with the science and engineering challenges that faced the Curiosity attempt can fully appreciate the odds of failure that NASA was bucking.

 

And that is where presidential leadership should have come in.

 

In the morning hours immediately after Curiosity’s touch down, the President should have addressed the nation and explained the challenges that had faced NASA, how they had technically and organizationally overcome them, and highlighted the fact that none of this would have been possible without government support.

 

Foreseeable Republican Party critics be darned.

 

 

Why I am so irritated with — the President’s gutter-dwelling priorities — and his consistent failure to lead and inspire on Truth’s basis

 

President Obama has consistently displayed an inability or unwillingness to lead, or even honestly educate, in any significant aspect regarding the United States’ most fundamental national interests.

 

Instead, he has used his very considerable talents to play political games built on psychological manipulations, lies, and egregious distortions.

 

One would think that a steady diet of bringing out the worst in himself and, potentially, the nation would have made the Commander in Chief eager to seize on something that is an unalloyed positive.

 

But, instead of immediately drawing attention to NASA’s Curiosity success on Mars, the President waited a full week even to telephone its representatives with his congratulations:

 

(1) Gone is this delay, and absent in his casually delivered message, was any attempt to popularize the “STEM” educational initiatives that his own administration wants the public to believe that it is serious about.

 

(2) Missing was any effort to highlight the importance of focusing the United States, as an integrated national entity, on grappling with the challenges presented by a successful national future.

 

(3) Overlooked was the opportunity to define an American mission in the 21st Century.

 

 

The moral? — President Obama is tone-deaf, when it comes to manifesting courageous and inspired leadership that actually matters

 

More than a pity.

 

Lest anyone think that I consider Republican presidential candidate, Governor Mitt Romney, to possess more talent, I do not.

 

Neither man is gifted with the spine, focused intelligence, and inspiration that mark competent, much less great, leaders.