North Star Writers Group

Certainly the Pilgrims who landed in New England left their native countries intent on establishing that “shining city on a hill” in which their version of God’s righteousness would thrive.

Their descendents may have rejected the religious trappings, but their perfectionist streak lives on in a secular incarnation. Whenever catastrophe strikes, we Americans insist on doing something – at times anything – to make sure such tragedy never happens again. We call for more laws, more research, more education, as if any of the preceding could eradicate that most human of tendencies: fallibility. We all make mistakes.

Perfectionism imposes a high price in the corporate world. The late psychologist and author J. Clayton Lafferty studied more than 9,000 managers and professionals and found that perfectionism, although considered a positive attribute, was more likely to harm employees and businesses. Lafferty called perfectionism an illusion, and equated it with the desire to look good. Perfectionists equate their self-worth with flawless performance, and are likely to try to cover up their mistakes. As a result, productivity suffers.

I have personal experience with the small ways in which perfectionists pummel productivity. I once watched a perfectionist boss take time to replace the stamp I had put on an envelope because it wasn’t precisely straight. As if the recipients would give a hoot that the stamp was misaligned. They probably didn’t look at it, straight or crooked.

Perfectionism extracts a high personal toll as well. Perfectionists suffer from all manner of stress-related physical ailments, live in constant fear of being seen as less than perfect and are always disappointed in themselves and others for not living up to their fantasy of perfection. They are so keenly disappointed, they often resort to denial to keep the pain and self-condemnation at bay.

Take the current occupant of the White House. George W. Bush is indeed a perfectionist, and his personal issues have become the country’s nightmare. During the 2004 presidential election campaign, Mr. Bush was asked to think of a mistake he had made during his first term of office. He said he could not think of any.

That’s amazing. I am several years younger than Mr. Bush, and I haven’t got enough fingers and toes to count all my major life mistakes, much less my daily minor boo-boos and bumbles.

Nowhere was Mr. Bush’s perfectionist denial of his fallibility more on display than his most recent speech about Iraq. “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me,” he said.

Using the passive voice enabled Mr. Bush to evade admitting to any mistakes, much less offering any kind of apology for policy failures that have led to tens of thousands of American and Iraqi deaths and made this country less secure than ever.

It’s one thing for individuals in perfectionist denial to wreak havoc among their families, friends or even their workplaces. It’s another thing entirely to have a perfectionist in the highest of public offices asserting unlimited powers to make war and remake the U.S. Constitution to suit his whims. The mayhem a perfectionist president leaves in his wake has profound national and international effects and consequences.

Mr. Bush most likely will never own up to any of his errors and remain in perfectionist denial to the end of his days. That does not mean the rest of us must follow suit. We can demand an end to failed policies and pay close attention to any hints of perfectionism in the 2008 presidential candidates in order to avoid choosing another such individual.

Nothing less than the survival of our nation is at stake.

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This is Column #CT19. Request permission to publish here.