To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards.

Essay topics:

To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards.

The statement asserts that the highest ethical and moral codes are necessary for a public official to become an effective leader. First of all, the phrase “ethical and moral codes” needs to be clarified. It is certain that they apply when the civil servants are on duty. However, do they apply to personal life or under special circumstances? To answer the questions, I do not fully agree with the argument.

Admittedly, policies established by a public official known for his or her highest ethical and moral codes carry more weight and effectiveness. When the civil servant demonstrates candid political or administrative activities, the general public follows his or her lead with confidence no matter how hard it can be. Singapore is a famous country because of its various fines for peccadilloes. For example, Smoking in every places and possession of gums are all subjects of fines. However, most people in Singapore do their best to comply all tedious regulations because they believe that the public officials maintain even higher ethical standards in both public and private lives and enforce the laws for the greater good of the nation. In the recent study done by OECD about the corruption index of its member nations, Singapore is placed in 6th among all members of OECD in 2017 and it is considered as the most corruption-free country in Asia.

On the contrary, the high ethical and moral standards are not the required virtue for a good leader. Every civic servant has high morality does not always become effective. Even though the leader has a few flaws in his or her personal life, that doesn’t necessarily mean the leader’s incompetent. Thus, ethical norms and effectiveness are not correlated with each other. For example, Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States, was named one of the most successful president thanks to the peace treaty between Israel and Palestine and rapid economic growth during his terms although he was under investigation by the special prosecutor for perjury and sex scandal. If the highest moral standards were required to be a successful leader, President Clinton would not have achieved anything through his presidency.

Furthermore, there may be special circumstances that leaders have to make a decision against their ethical codes. Especially, if the leader governs the nation, he or she will certainly face situations that the public officer has to lie to the public for the greater goods, such as national security. Some say that this is the violation of the constitutional right, right to know; however, it may jeopardize not only the situation but lives of the citizens, whom the leaders have sworn to protect. For instance, when Barak Obama was the president of the United States, there was the operation to assassinate or capture Osama Bin Laden, the most wanted terrorist after 9.11. While the operation was taking place, the White House was questioned about the operation and whereabouts of the SEAL team. The spokesperson was instructed by the president not to comment on the operation and to lie about the SEAL team. When the White House announced the result of the operation to the public, no one blamed the president for lying.

To sum, I do not fully agree with the author’s statement that the public official must have the highest moral and ethical codes. Although good morality sometimes helps for leaders to become effective, two virtues are not directly correlated as a cause and result relation. We may expect the public officials as leaders to be ethical and competent at the same time; however, it is not true that they must have two different virtues to become effective.

Votes
Average: 6.6 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 233, Rule ID: GENERAL_XX[1]
Message: Use simply 'public'.
Suggestion: public
...tical or administrative activities, the general public follows his or her lead with confidence...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 840, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...hieved anything through his presidency. Furthermore, there may be special circum...
^^^^^^
Line 7, column 1030, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... no one blamed the president for lying. To sum, I do not fully agree with the au...
^^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, so, thus, while, as to, for example, for instance, such as, first of all, on the contrary

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.5258426966 128% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.4196629213 64% => OK
Conjunction : 26.0 14.8657303371 175% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 11.3162921348 124% => OK
Pronoun: 37.0 33.0505617978 112% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 58.6224719101 111% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 12.9106741573 132% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3092.0 2235.4752809 138% => OK
No of words: 607.0 442.535393258 137% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.09390444811 5.05705443957 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.96360453597 4.55969084622 109% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7873167996 2.79657885939 100% => OK
Unique words: 291.0 215.323595506 135% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.479406919275 0.4932671777 97% => OK
syllable_count: 974.7 704.065955056 138% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59117977528 101% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 6.24550561798 128% => OK
Article: 8.0 4.99550561798 160% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 3.10617977528 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.77640449438 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.38483146067 91% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 27.0 20.2370786517 133% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 23.0359550562 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.8591119686 60.3974514979 97% => OK
Chars per sentence: 114.518518519 118.986275619 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.4814814815 23.4991977007 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.88888888889 5.21951772744 94% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.97078651685 101% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 7.80617977528 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 16.0 10.2758426966 156% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 5.13820224719 117% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.83258426966 103% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.331184144513 0.243740707755 136% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0900102330126 0.0831039109588 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.106731729462 0.0758088955206 141% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.199518497697 0.150359130593 133% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0760548310574 0.0667264976115 114% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.8 14.1392134831 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.8420337079 101% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.92365168539 111% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.1743820225 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.54 12.1639044944 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.47 8.38706741573 101% => OK
difficult_words: 144.0 100.480337079 143% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 11.8971910112 63% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.2143820225 96% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.7820224719 93% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.