What Obama Shouldn't Do

President-Elect Barack Obama has made plenty of promises about what he's going to do: provide tax relief to the middle class, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, invest in renewable energy, ensure that all children receive a first-rate education, and make health care accessible and affordable for every American--all while taming the nation's monstrous deficit.

But as Peter Drucker made clear, Obama's success may well hinge on what he chooses not to do.

It is absolutely crucial, Drucker wrote in a 1993 piece in which he dispensed a little management advice for the Oval Office, that any new President "not stubbornly do what he wants to do, even if it was the focus of his campaign."

He noted that Harry Truman came into the Presidency convinced, "as were most Americans," that he should begin tackling a string of domestic problems, what with the end of World War II at hand. "What made him an effective President," said Drucker, "was his accepting within a few weeks that international affairs, especially the containment of Stalin's worldwide aggression, had to be given priority whether he liked it or not (and he didn't).

"There seems to be a law of American politics," Drucker continued, "that the world always changes between Election Day and Inauguration Day. To refuse to accept this--as Jimmy Carter tried to do--is not to be 'principled.' It is to deny reality and condemn oneself to being ineffectual."

Of course, in Obama's case, the upending of the world has already happened. Strengthening the economy, and especially bringing some relief to battered homeowners, has to be his No. 1 aim. Should Obama splinter his efforts and concentrate on much more at the outset than fixing the financial system, he is likely, as Drucker put it, to "achieve nothing."

No "Sure Thing"

Another what-not-to-do rule for the President-elect: "Don't ever bet on a sure thing," Drucker wrote. "It always misfires." Drucker recalled that no President has enjoyed more of a popular mandate than did Franklin Roosevelt heading into his second term. Indeed, he had "every reason to believe that his plan to 'pack' the Supreme Court and thereby remove the last obstacle to…New Deal reforms" would be a slam dunk. His move, however, immediately backfired--"so much so," Drucker pointed out, "that he never regained control of Congress."

Obama's gracious victory speech, in which he reached across the aisle and expressed "a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress," was a good and important first step. As he moves along in the months ahead, he must continue to take that same tack in both words and deeds.

What else shouldn't Obama do? "An effective President," Drucker wrote, "has to say 'no' to the temptation to micromanage." The most promising paradigm, he suggested, might be FDR's cabinet, where "nine of 10 members (all but the Secretary of State) were what we would now call technocrats--competent specialists in one area." "I make the decision," Drucker quoted Roosevelt as saying, "and then turn the job over to a cabinet member and leave him or her alone."

By contrast, Drucker asserted, trying to have a single White House chief-of-staff spearhead an Administration's biggest programs "has never worked" very well. Neither, he said, does the Clintonesque model of bringing into the room "dozens and dozens of deputy secretaries, undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, special assistants, and so on." That merely turns the highest levels of government "into a perpetual mass meeting."

Of all the things for the President not to do, though, Drucker left little doubt: He must never assume that government can--or should even try-- to solve every ill.

Government Ineffectiveness

"There is mounting evidence that government is big rather than strong; that it is fat and flabby rather than powerful; that it costs a great deal but does not achieve much," Drucker wrote 40 years ago in The Age of Discontinuity. Three decades later, in an article in The Atlantic, Drucker's frank assessment hadn't changed much: "Government everywhere--in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the former Soviet Union--has proved unable to run community and society."

Drucker didn't just lash out, however. He also offered up his share of prescriptions. Among them: building "the habit of continuous improvement" into all federal departments and introducing "benchmarking," in which the performance of various agencies would be compared annually, "with the best becoming the standard to be met by all the following year."

But, as Drucker saw it, the thing that government needs to do, most of all, is to stop doing. "The purpose of government is to make fundamental decisions and to make them effectively," Drucker declared. "The purpose of government is to focus the political energies of society. It is to dramatize issues. It is to present fundamental choices. The purpose of government, in other words, is to govern.

"This, as we have learned in other institutions, is incompatible with 'doing.' Any attempt to combine government with 'doing' on a large scale paralyzes the decision-making capacity. Any attempt to have decision-making organs actually 'do' also means very poor 'doing.' They are…not equipped for it."

Obama, for his part, seems to have embraced this philosophy. It makes no sense to push for "an era of no government," he told The New York Times Magazine last summer. "What we need to bring about is the end of the era of unresponsive and inefficient government and short-term thinking in government, so that government is laying the groundwork, the framework, the foundation for the market to operate effectively and for every single individual to be able to be connected with that market and to succeed in that market."

In the end, the surest route to "Yes We Can" will be for the President sometimes to say, "No, I'm afraid I can't."