Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers who can cut through argument debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.
Concerns about the size and role of government are what seem to leave reformers stammering and speechless in town-hall meetings. The right wants to have a debate over fundamental principles elected Democrats seem incapable of giving it to them.
Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?
By the time Obama came into office Washington had already agreed over a period of a few weeks to a $700 billion government infusion into the world banking system. Nothing of the sort had ever been done before and it was done spit spot with very little national debate.
Republicans and Democrats have used accounting gimmicks and competing government analyses to deceive the public into believing that 2 + 2 = 6. If our leaders cannot agree on the numbers if 'facts' are fictional how can they possibly have a substantive debate on solutions?
A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant superficial and uninformed.
The subject of criminal rehabilitation was debated recently in City Hall. It's an appropriate place for this kind of discussion because the city has always employed so many ex-cons and future cons.
If the euro zone doesn't come up with a comprehensive vision of its own future you'll have a whole range of nationalist xenophobic and extreme movements increasing across the European Union. And frankly questions about the British debate on EU membership will just be a small sideshow compared to the rise of political populism.
It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly those who dispute with one another at last agree.
Freedom means the right of people to assemble organize and debate openly.