Is Rev. Peter Morales Running For UUA President aka UUA CEO Or Is He *Really* Running For Executive Vice President Of The UUA aka UUA COO?

Some time ago the idea of a co-Presidency of the UUA with both Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman and Rev. Peter Morales briefly flitted through my mind but I did not give it too much serious thought because it just seemed unrealistic and impractical. Somewhat later, it occurred to me that the runner-up in the UUA Presidential s*elections *could*, and perhaps should, get the proverbial "consolation prize" of replacing Kathleen Montgomery as the Executive Vice President of the UUA. I don't know a lot about Kathleen Montgomery, she seems to keep a rather low profile, but regardless of how competent or indeed incompetent she may be in her role as Executive Vice President of the UUA *I* think that she has held that position for a bit too long for anyone in a genuinely *democratic* religious community. So I am formally proposing that when the UUA Presidential election has been decided in June that the person who is s*elected as UUA President and the UUA Board of Trustees give very serious consideration to giving the job of Executive Vice President to the hopefully not so sore loser of the UUA Presidential s*election campaign. In fact I think that they should be given that position unless a) they have no interest in being the Chief Operating Officer of the UUA aka UUA COO or b) there are some compelling reasons for not making them Executive Vice President of the UUA.

That being said, it just came to my attention earlier tonight that Rev. Peter Morales *may* be dropping hints that he would be interested in being the Executive Vice President of the UUA, and apparent front-runner Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman *may* be dropping hints that she is open to that possibility. I get these *possible* "hints" by reading between *some* of the lines of a blog post entitled 'Hallman, Morales on Administration' on the lengthily named 'Blog Whose Name Is Way Too Long To Expect People To Fully And Completely Name It When Mentioning It Or Quoting From It On Their Blogs' blog. Maybe I will take a cue from its URL and refer to it as the UUA Presidential Debate 2009 blog from here on in. Here is the section where

Morales - I would want to be the CEO, and that’s the way I have worked a great deal of my life. (Editor's note: Bear with me. . .) And if one were to look at my track record in government and in publishing and right now in my own congregation, I am relentlessly collaborative. I mean, I make sure that everyone who has a stake in a decision, gets input into it. I seek consensus. I also try to make sure that people who don’t belong at the table don’t have to suffer through meetings where they have nothing, where they don’t have a dog in that fight, because I’ve spent too many of my own hours doing that. But you make much better decisions when they’re collaborative. It’s a matter of input, but accountability is about, I think, the CEO being held accountable. (Editor's note: Gotta love that bit. No U*Us?) The executive vice president, yeah, especially given how much of the presidency has been, and I think will be and needs to be, dealing with the external. The UUA needs in the corporate world what would be called a chief operating officer.

Hallman: I would want to (sic) COO, to clarify that as well. And collaboration has, I just want to also be very clear about the fact, that collaboration isn’t necessarily consensus. We have a strange understanding of consensus, I believe, which is not, we take it from the Quakers but we don’t take their whole spiritual and their disciplined way of going about it. And so I want to make sure that we don’t, that you don’t hear that I’m saying that we need consensus or that everybody has to have a voice and kind of thumbprint everything. We tend to do that, too. We want to be efficient about that process and make decisions when decisions just need to be made and we don’t need to go through the loops of getting everybody’s thumbprint.

end quote

Presumably Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman meant to say, "I would want a COO." As in, "I would want a Chief Operating Officer." I take note of how she says this in response to Rev. Peter Morales' statement in which in almost the same breath as saying, "I would want to be the CEO," he mentions how relentlessly collaborative he is and quickly segues into mentioning the position of Executive Vice-President of the UUA being a a chief operating officer. I *may* be reading a bit too much into this but then again, I may not. . . Time will tell. If following the UUA Presidential election UUA President Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman appoints Rev. Peter Morales as Executive Vice-President of the UUA aka Chief Relentlessly Co-Operating Officer of the UUA just remember that U*Us read it here first. :-)