This business of The Leader being a paragon of judgment and probity that everyone looks respectfully up to at all times - Picard, in other words - is dull as dishwater.
Totally agree. That's why I really liked Pulaski — she challenged Picard. He really needed a character who'd stand up to him, force him to look at problems from another perspective. It should've been Riker from the beginning.
Yeah, but what's missing there is - Picard was usually right; he was at least a character who possessed enormous moral and intellectual gravity in any disagreement. It had to be "I respectfully disagree, but you are the Captain." You couldn't approach him with "I understand this and you don't so here's why we can't do it your way at all."
Jack O'Neill was just the guy whose job was to be in charge. Lots of times he had to be turned around a little because his people were smarter or in some other way ahead of him.
Some of the people he led got on his nerves, a lot. He got on theirs. Some he was partial to, and that would affect his decisions too.
There are a lot of people like that in fiction and in real life - okay, in real life, maybe
all of them. Because I've got the job of leading doesn't mean I know better than everyone else. Maybe I'm good at it and maybe I'm not, maybe I have the experience to see what others don't sometimes, but at the end of the day I'm just a limited individual like the people who report to me. Sometimes I'm just wrong.
I guess I'm saying it's past time that Star Trek rethought the entire Trek myth of leadership in favor of something more human.