Bad rap for Dumbledore? was: Sirius - who is right?

[mkaliz]

No: HPFGUIDX 73623

Wanda said:

> I think that Dumbledore is getting a bad rap here.  Everyone 
> complains that he bungled as far as Sirius goes, that he should have 
> known better, done things differently, etc.  I have to ask, just 
> WHAT was Dumbledore supposed to do?  He states plainly the reason he 
> did what he did: to keep Sirius alive.  And Harry's response, and 
> that of a lot of Sirius fans is basically 'Thanks for nothing.' 

I see Dumbledore as a kind of "General Manager" for the Order. He
seems to be the "point person" in getting people organized,
authorizing missions, coming up with strategy, etc. Members in the
Order generally seem to take their cue from him. But, as General
Manager, he also needs to be aware of the 'human' side of the Order
members, not just their task capabilities. 

Speaking from experience here, it's pretty important for a manager to
know if one of his/her employees is going through a messy divorce, or
has a sick child at home, or a spouse who was diagnosed with cancer,
or a parent with Alzheimer's etc. Those kinds of things will impact an
employee's performance and therefore impact the manager's business
objectives. A good manager needs to be aware of those sorts of things
so that s/he can make adjustments in task assignments or deadlines or
vacation/sick-time, and so on. Not to mention the fact that, it just
makes good sense to demonstrably care about your employees' lives,
rather than treating them like a means-to-an-end. ::g::

My criticism of Dumbledore here stems from my perception of him as a
rather poor manager. He certainly seems to have his heart in the right
place, but as we know, the road to hell can be paved with good
intentions. In my opinion, his treatment of Sirius in OotP is just one
example in a long list of examples where he was either 1) overly
optimistic in his assessment of the members' mental/emotional state,
or 2) was lax in his willingness to mitigate the effects that their
mental/emotional state might have on Order objectives. I won't even
comment on what I think about the way he runs the school! ::eg::

And yes, I agree, it's all about choices. Sirius didn't *have* to
ignore Molly's suggestion to stay behind when Harry started back to
school. But I think that a perceptive manager would have heard about
the incident and thought, "Hmm, Sirius is getting very restless and
seems kind of depressed. I should probably give him something
important to do to keep him occupied." 

If even Hermione--who has known Sirius for a very short while--could
detect that the guy was 'on-the-edge' and possibly willing to do
something, er, rash, then certainly Dumbledore should have known. So
far as I can tell, given his leadership role in the Order, it was his
responsibility to know. 
 
> What would have been the better solution?  Give Sirius more 
> interesting things to do at GP?  It didn't matter WHAT he was asked 
> to do there, Sirius wanted *out*, and nothing less.

There are any number of things that Dumbledore could have done that
might have made Sirius' virtual imprisonment in the house a bit more
bearable. For one thing, he could have arranged a way for Harry and
Sirius to communicate periodically. I think that would have gone a
*long* way to making the situation more bearable for both Sirius *and*
Harry. He could have given Sirius some important, yet house-bound task
to perform. 

And you're right, none of these things might have made a single bit of
difference in the end. Sirius may have eventually done something to
get out of the house anyway, and either gotten killed, captured by
DEs, or sent back to Azkaban. However, the thing that bothers me most
is that Dumbledore doesn't seem to have thought to try to do anything
 at all. That kind of blindness or inattention in a leader is really
worrisome to me. It's a huge weakness in his management style and has
already been implicated in several bad outcomes...hence my criticism
of Dumbledore.

--kai