There is little doubt that we have gone from a country that many in the world respected to a country whom many despise and fear. There are those at the United Nations who even believe we have waged an unlawful war in Iraq.

I’m challenged to understand what’s happening with this election. If polls are to be believed, the majority of the people are satisfied with the status quo.

Even if you supported the decision to invade Iraq, it’s hard to deny that the situation in Iraq is getting worse. The president’s own intelligence reports support this conclusion.

If you did not support the invasion, it’s getting easier by the day to declare you were right. Instead of decreasing terrorism, the war in Iraq has, as many mid-eastern experts warned, fanned the flames of radicalism and increased the feelings of hate towards America in the Arab world.

There is little doubt that we have gone from a country that many in the world respected to a country whom many despise and fear. There are those at the United Nations who even believe we have waged an unlawful war in Iraq.

How the majority of the people can look at this and be satisfied really mystifies me. Is there an alternate reality that I’m missing?

With thirty-plus years in the business world, I can’t help but evaluate the situation from that perspective. What if the members of this administration were employees of mine?

If they sold me on the fact that they were going to deliver weapons of mass destruction and then delivered something else, the inescapable assumption is that they don’t know what they’re doing or that they’re trying to fool me. If I trust them to go after al Qaeda, and they go off on a nation-building exercise for sake of ideology, I’m going to haul their rears into my office and explain what staying focused on the job means.

If they start telling me how wonderful things are going, and there’s evidence all over the place that this isn’t the case, I’d put them on a performance plan, plain and simple. Stay on task, get me out of this mess, and get back to the job you were supposed to do. If they can’t figure out how to do this quickly, they need to find other jobs. I’ll find someone else to replace them in the hopes that new team will do a better job.

That is the business world. There is no ideology involved. You say what you’re going to do, and then you do what you said and are measured on those results. If the results are not good, as they are sometimes, it doesn’t necessarily mean you fire the employee. The effort might have been right, but the intelligence or support from the company might have been lacking. Smart companies, employers, and leaders define what went wrong and put to together a plan to fix the problem.

Unfortunately, when people deny there’s a problem or try to hide it, you have to change personnel. People who make up their own reality are never accountable for good or bad results. Not replacing people when they need to go only makes the challenges harder and can have catastrophic results in government or business.

There are a whole list of other items in my performance review of this administration--tax cuts, health care, the deficit, the environment, and increased secrecy in government--and I’ve seen enough to start evaluating replacements.

Unfortunately, it’s a whole lot harder to conduct a really good job interview than it is write a performance review.

Am I satisfied with the job interview that I have gotten from the new guys banging on the door? In a word no, but as is often the case in the business world, my performance evaluation of the current team leaves me little choice. It’s time for a change, and though I’m nervous, I have to hope these new folks will grow into the job and learn from the mistakes of the people before them. It’s pretty clear the current team does not think they have made any mistakes.

I’m not going to worry, as some would have me do, that a vote for new leadership could lead to a new terrorist attack. Terrorist attacks can kill thousands, but they cannot destroy America. What will destroy our country is the unwillingness to actively give our politicians a real job review every chance we get.

Above all, I want the leaders we elect to tell me the truth even if the truth is that they were wrong. Leadership goes hand-in-hand with the opportunity to make mistakes and accept the accountability for them. If there are no mistakes, you have a magician, not a leader.

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