Two things that make for great leaders in startups are the ability to recruit and motivate top talent and honesty (with the team and with investors). Top talent is critical because that’s how stuff actually gets done and gets done well. There are so many important decisions to be made every day that they have to be delegated. Otherwise the leader becomes a complete bottleneck. Honesty is critical because if you are keeping your team or your investors in the dark about problems (or opportunities) they can’t in fact help you or will make bad decisions based on wrong information (e.g., hiring more people when the company is already overspending).
Both of these are things that scare me about McCain/Palin. Before his pick of Palin, I had some hope that even if we wound up with McCain he would actually chose qualifications over ideology. Now it seems that winning is more important than anything else, which does not bode well for how administration spots would be filled. But even scarier is the outright lying that kicked off with the speeches at the Republican convention and has continued with a series of ads since then. This is so sadly reminiscent of the Bush administration contorting or even fabricating the “facts” on Iraq. I am not advocating some strict Kantian imperative for leaders, but a broad pattern of deceit is a big part of what has gotten us into the many messes we are in right now.
