What a horrible week for the theory of leadership. He just can't move forward without looking at these two things and wondering what the heck went wrong. Actually, I have a bet on why one went wrong, but the other one... inexcusable!

The first thing that went wrong, although I believe I know why it happened, was the leader of North Korea first dismissing his uncle from a top leadership post in the country, and then executing him less than a week later. In my opinion this guy is unstable, and he must be reading the biography of Stalin because this is the same kind of thing he used to do. After all, we know that Stalin killed at least one of his sons and many of his relatives in his quest to keep power.

The second thing that went wrong was at Nelson Mandela's funeral, where it seems the sign language translator didn't know what he was doing and actually might've been a fake. Of course this one brings up many issues such as who vetted this guy, what if he had had an ulterior motive and was there to hurt or assassinate someone, and how such a lapse of security could occur on either the South African or American security watch.

Good leadership means that you take care of the little things as well as the big things, but you make sure you don't mess up the big things. On a world stage this was about as big as it could get. Whereas it seems that most people are blaming South Africa, I'm of the opinion that the Secret Service messed up in this case as well. If this had been someone from the United States there is no way this guy could have ever gotten inside the ceremony, let alone right there on stage with the president.

Of course the other issue is that Nelson Mandela passed away at 95, but that wasn't so much of an issue because we were all expecting it to come at some point. What's amazing is how much his life meant to so many people while still being a lightning rod for those who saw him as nothing more than a terrorist I didn't comment on this all week long because I saw it back to what the British must have felt when the colonies rose against them. One person's hero is always someone else's terrorist or criminal. I supported Mandela and everything he stood for, but for once decided to stay on the sidelines for a while.

Leadership isn't a perfect science, but there's some things that unforgivable. In my opinion there are some people who need to be fired both in South Africa and within the Secret Service. As for North Korea... well, we'll just have to deal with them for one little while longer.