By By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
BENTON HARBOR – Leaders need to be bold and to keep six things in mind, particularly in high-anxiety times of rapid change.
First, ask why-not questions, former Florida governor Jeb Bush told The Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan Tuesday night at Lake Michigan College Mendel Center.
"Why not is better than why," he said. "If you ask why-not questions enough, eventually whoever is defending the status quo either has to do it enough to maintain it or concede there's a better way of doing things."
"We should encourage all of our candidates, whether we support everything that they advocate or not, to be bold, to take chances. People are seeking genuineness and someone who actually will say what they're going to do, have the courage of their convictions and give confidence that can be done. That's not an easy thing to do today in politics, but I'm living proof in purple state Florida that a conservative guy in a state that is definitely not as conservative as I was can get elected.
"People did not agree with everything I said, but they had confidence my heart was in the right place and they knew what I was going to do. Imagine what the world will look like in 2009, as we elect a new President and Congress, if the climate changed to a consensus that we need to get things done as it relates to energy, security or immigration reform or how we're going to be competitive in this increasingly interdependent world. Or how we're going to deal with the ticking time bomb of entitlements. Imagine a new culture in politics where there is a sense of optimism that things can be done. I imagine that all the time. It's worth taking a risk to maintain the greatness of our country."
"In a fast-changing world," Bush said, "government has to change along with the rest of us. If not, it can't serve us. Having intellectual curiosity to pursue the ideas that come from it is part of leadership."
The Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan President Michael Cook has announced that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be the sixth speaker in its 2007-2008 schedule.
The member-only meeting will be held May 27, 2008, at the Mendel Center for Arts and Technology, Lake Michigan College, Benton Township.
Second, Bush learned to "fill the space. In the battle of ideas, yours need to be the ones people are talking about. You can't play defense in the advocacy of reform. You have to fill the space with your agenda," a concept described by author Jim Collins as a "BHAG" – a big, hairy, audacious goal.
"Florida was all about BHAGs," he said. "People had to respond to our initiatives. The biggest BHAG in Florida is rising student achievement and closing the achievement gap between haves and have-nots. The greatest civil rights challenge in America today is people's inability to read, write, calculate math and think abstractly. They're never going to get the jobs that will begin to exist 10 years from now. We're putting people on a track of despair unless we raise the level of achievement – particularly for lower-income families.
"Because we created this goal that filled the space, we did all sorts of things. We eliminated social promotion in third grade. We graded schools A through F based on student learning. We awarded schools when they improved. We improved public education because there was a series of initiatives organized around this idea that God gave every child the ability to learn. It's up to us to organize ourselves around that so they do. A whole flurry of new reforms came. Had it not been for this comprehensive BHAG concept, we would have fought each step along the way," Bush said.
For example, Florida counted its mentors, which numbered 105,000 spending at least an hour a week with a child. The goal was to have 200,000 in five years. Bush enlisted former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell to launch the initiative. "We now have over 200,000," he said. "Rising student achievement could not have occurred without this BHAG. We broke the Guinness Book of World Records on reading in middle school with 198,000 kids simultaneously" reading a book by Dowagiac visitor Dave Barry.
"When you fill spaces, people start moving toward your ideas," Bush said. "If you play defense in politics or life itself, you never move forward."
Third, stick with it. Big ideas require determination, which goes against the grain of America's immediate-gratification-seeking culture, but "weeding this out is one of our great challenges. It took more than two generations to get where we are, so how can we expect in one year to solve that problem?
"Dogged determination becomes important. Here's where I admire my brother a lot. When people call (President George W. Bush) stubborn, I call him determined. When people say he's out of touch, I know he's resolute. Great leaders stick with their beliefs and convictions and get through the tough times. History will sort out who the winners and losers are – not the pundits of here and now."
Fourth, Bush "learned the hard way. To be successful in public leadership, you have to listen, which is hard. Is there a mayor in here?" he asked an audience which included Dowagiac Mayor Don Lyons. "Mayors don't get their tushes kissed as much as governors do because you're right here and people can complain directly. If you start thinking you're smarter than you really are, political leaders stop listening. Forcing yourself to listen is an element of leadership that is more and more important as people feel disenfranchised and disengaged. It's hard to do in Florida, a diverse state of 18 million people with a capital 10 miles from Georgia."
To stay connected, Bush relied on his BlackBerry. Giving out his personal e-mail address, jeb@jeb.org – "let me have it if you think this speech stinks" – brought him a deluge of 550,000 messages, including an angry 85-year-old West Palm Beach woman who wanted to know what he was going to do about a raccoon in her attic.
"I called the mayor," he laughed. "But it truly made a difference because people knew I was their servant. Connecting with people gives you a chance to communicate. If people are so turned off that they're not listening, no amount of communication or creativity will ever overcome this disenfranchisement that exists today in politics. Listening is important."
Fifth, leaders need "servants' hearts. This is not about running things," Bush said. "Florida tried to remove barriers to create an army of people trying to help others. I'm proud we have the two faith-based U.S. prisons – one for men and one for women."
Finally, "In a world of cynicism, where people don't believe what they hear anymore, leaders need to say what they'll do, then do it," Bush said. "Doing exactly what you said you're going to may be the most important. Connecting that bond restores people's faith in government."
"People in the private sector look down on public leadership," he noted. "They think politics is not worthy of getting your hands dirty in because it doesn't seem to be working that well, but I think public leadership is actually a leading indicator of what private-sector leadership is going to be about. Leaders now are dealing with much more dysfunctional kinds of things."
"We're moving into a world that is more turbulent, it's faster-paced and it creates change at the drop of a hat," he said. "We're really moving into a new world. I'm afraid not everyone in our country grasps the velocity of the change that has taken place. Leaders matter more now than ever."
Bush said he learned through trial and error and "some massive mistakes," after which he "dusted myself off and went back at it. The one lesson I did learn is that trial and error is the only way to improve. If you're expecting people in government and politics to get it right every time, you will neuter the political system and make it something where there is no risk. No risk means no reward, no return. We know this intuitively in our own lives, but yet we expect politicians to be perfect in every way, to never make mistakes or to never try something different with which we might not agree."
Tiger Woods is Bush's favorite example of a risk taker, first because he loves golf.
"At the top of his game, No. 1 in the world, he decided his game was not good enough. This was about four years ago. I was told by (former Michigan governor) John Engler that there are more public golf courses in Michigan than there are in Florida. I bet him $10 he was wrong, and I found out he was right.
"Tiger Woods took a risk, remodeled his swing and, for a two-year period he didn't win a major (tournament). All the pundits said maybe Tiger's done for. He's now No. 1 and remarkably ahead of everyone else. Taking risks matter a lot, so we should allow people to take risks. If they don't get it right, there shouldn't be this degree of punishment that exists in politics or, for that matter, the private sector."
In Florida, "I got a chance to implement ideas and it gave me a sense of optimism about the future of politics if you're willing to allow people to try to challenge the status quo," Bush said. "We eliminated the civil service system and replaced it with a performance-based system. In Florida, a civil servant can be fired for incompetence, which has enhanced the ability to serve people because they don't have lifetime employment. We have 10,000 fewer jobs in state employment with better service. We saved $700 million in outsourcing and avoided $1.2 billion in additional investment by taking the risk of trying to do something better. We ended affirmative action in Florida, but with one higher entrance requirement, there are more African Americans and Hispanics attending our universities than prior."
"And we did all this in an environment of fiscal restraint," Bush said. "During my eight years the government only spent money at the rate or less than the rate of personal income. In Florida, the people's income grew faster than government's," which prompted an audience member to urge him to run for Michigan governor since he said he does not aspire to the White House.
The Bush administration in Tallahassee provided $20 billion in cumulative tax cuts. "At the end of my tenure we had $8 billion in reserves," he said – until eight hurricanes slammed his state in 16 months.
"At the same time," Bush said, "we limited the ability of the state to indebt itself. Florida was the only state in the last 10 years to increase its credit rating from AA to AAA. I'm not saying this to brag, but because there's a lot of pessimism in our country that we can't get things done. I'm living proof that whether you like what we did or not, we certainly did a lot of things because there was a tolerance for taking risk and challenging the status quo."
"I'm sure the governor here has the same problem," Bush said. "Legislatures like to spend more than they should. I used the power of the veto pen. I wish the President of the United States had the line-item veto. I vetoed 2,552 items during my eight years totaling $2.3 billion, earning me the nickname 'Veto Corleone.' "
Bush, term-limited after eight years as governor, grew up in the Lone Star state, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree in Latin American studies from the University of Texas in Austin.
He moved to Florida in 1981 and, with a partner, started a small real estate development company that today is the largest full-service commercial real estate company in south Florida.
Bush was Florida's commerce secretary before making an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 1994.
He was elected Florida's 43rd governor in 1998 and re-elected in 2002.
His older brother, George W., won re-election to his second term as Texas governor, making them the first siblings to govern two states simultaneously since Winthrop and Nelson Rockefeller in Arkansas and New York.