Last week, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FLA) appeared CNN’s “The Lead” to discuss the highly controversial issue of Syria. At the start of the interview, anchorman Jake Tapper asked the senator, “If you were president right now, what would you advocate?”
Senator Rubio’s answer was, “We have no good options because of two years of inaction.”
Because the senator did not answer the question, Mr. Tapper asked it again, “What would you do?”
For the next nearly five minutes of the interview, Senator Rubio did not say what he would do were he president, instead he used the opportunity to blame President Obama five more times. (See the video)
- “The ideal outcome is that Assad falls… but that is no longer possible… directly as a result of the president’s mishandling of the situation.”
- “We may have reached the point now that, because of this administration’s total mismanagement of the situation, there is no possibility of a good outcome.”
- “What the president is advocating is basically a symbolic act.”
- “I hate to keep going back to the same point, but we may have reached the point where there is no good option in this conflict. And again, it is the direct result of the mismanagement of this conflict.”
- “I am frustrated that we are now hamstrung because of the options available to us, because the president chose to lead from behind for two years.”
The American public, long accustomed to how politicians behave, have come to tolerate the practice of ducking questions; business people, however, are not so tolerant. They demand answers to all questions or reasons why a presenter can’t provide an answer. No one expects a presenter to reveal trade secrets or competitive information, but diversions into blame are not acceptable. In business, transparency is all.
For more on this subject, please see my prior blog, Robert McNamara Was Wrong: You MUST Respond to All Questions