Adaptive Leadership: The Heifetz Collection (3 Items)

controlling the deficit, reforming the federal government, passing

NAFTA, protecting the environment, and more. He is a man of big

appetites, and like some other presidents, he makes the mistake of

trying to do too much too fast. He treats adaptive challenges as if

they were technical problems, overestimates his authority, and mis-

calculates the strategy and the pacing of change.

After eighteen months, he hits bottom. In the 1994 elections,

voters throw enough Democrats out of office to give Newt Gingrich

and his Contract with America an extraordinary mandate as well as

control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1995, Gingrich seizes the public imagination, and Clinton

tries to recover. Pathetically, he insists that as president, he still

has