George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Haiti

Few days ago, John King, the anchor of CNN political program, State of the Union hosted the former presidents Bush and Clinton. The occasion was their appointment by president Obama to head The Haiti Relief Fund in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that hit that Caribbean nation few weeks ago. The topic was, how it can be done and what are the priorities. I was intrigued not by the former president’s appearance as much as of what they have to say and their way of thinking regarding crisis management. Obviously, Clinton was more eloquent, focused and targeted on the details. He started by saying, correctly so, that the first thing that we need to do is to create a network in Haiti to manage the crisis, the rescue, and the rebuilding of a nation that did not have anything before the quake and basically went to below zero after the quake. Bush was focusing on getting people together, providing more human touch to those that lost love ones, most of the population. Clinton eloquence does not mean that he is a better leader than Bush, nor does it mean that he would be more capable or able to transform his ideas into solid realties on the ground. In the same token, Bush documented and well known lack of speech skills does not mean that he is the lesser leader. On the contrary, he could be the one that can in fact transform Clinton's eloquence into reality. Leadership- in my opinion- is all about inspiring, creating an effort or a network as Clinton said to transform what on paper to the ground in the form of relief, projects and most importantly into building a political system that works. Haiti needs a transparent and democratic system- like all nations on earth-which will help this country with unlimited potential in tourism to be as prosperous as other rich Caribbean islands.