Focus on Obama's leadership style amid Syria crisis

Weighing president's handling of situation

This is a rush transcript from "Your World," September 13, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Well, Grant Cardone says the president's overly cautious leadership style on Syria will ultimately hurt him in the end.

Grant follows these leadership issues, and says, if you're not first, you're last. That's his bestselling book.

How, on a leadership level, then, should he be doing things differently then? What do you think?

GRANT CARDONE, OWNER, CARDONE ENTERPRISES: Well, a leader makes hard decisions.

This is why I have never been an Obama fan. He is not making a decision. He is making a maybe. And when you're president of the United States, maybe you can do maybes. When you're a politician, maybe you can, but if you're running a household or running a business, it can't be maybe, because that stimulates people being uncertain, not sure, and they go into their own maybe.

Obama is going to be victimized for this. All people when they go into overly cautious situations, which he is in, and he's acting like that, he is acting like, I don't know what he's going to do and nobody does. He is a good community organizer. That's what he's proven here. He is not showing leadership.

CAVUTO: Now, Grant, the counterargument you get from the White House and others is, given our Iraq and Afghanistan experience, we're not going to rush into anything. We're going to take this slow and we're going to do this right.

What does a leadership expert say about that strategy, just be pensive, be thoughtful? You say that's not what is going on here.

CARDONE: I'm saying what he is doing is, he is sitting at a light. It's green or it's red. Stop or go.

He could have made the decision which would have been fine with me two weeks ago, hey, I'm not doing this now. Our country is tired of war. The people are tired of it. We can't afford it. It's a terrible, horrible thing happening there, but we're not going there. That could have been his decision, or, hey, we're going there, you're going with me, I'm going, and he would have done it two weeks ago.

A leader has to make tough decisions, not popular ones.

CAVUTO: And you argue that it will hurt, but I wonder how long it would hurt. I remember when John Kennedy first became president, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he looked like a weak leader and that he was a young novice and Khrushchev was going to run all over him, and then a little more than a year-and-a-half later, he shines at the Cuban Missile Crisis. People can take different views of that. I'm just stating that it wasn't what we thought. He was much more decisive and hands-on in a different crisis than he appeared to be in one. So it didn't hang with him that long.

What do you make of that and whether this president survives just the growing global doubt about his leadership style?

CARDONE: Look, I think the country -- I think the world knows he is not a leader, and they're proving it.

They're showing it right now in how they're treating him. The other world leaders are acting like he is a maybe. When I'm not certain of what leaders do, then I will make the decisions and be the leader, and that's what other leaders in other parts of the world are doing right now. They're playing him like a...

CAVUTO: Well, Grant, what if that -- what if that is his intention, that he doesn't want America to be the leader on all this stuff, the global community, you, the rest of the globe, have at it.

(CROSSTALK)

CARDONE: Then, Neil, he should have simply said that. He should have said, we're not in a position to be the police for the entire planet. We cannot do this at this time.

But he didn't. What he did was, I have the right to do it. I can do it. But I'm going to have somebody else do it. I'm going to make two decisions, which means I'm not going to make any decision. That's not what leaders do. And Americans are going to be hurt by this by being given the wrong example from the leader of the most powerful nation in the world that is being played like a two-string fiddle.

CAVUTO: Now you're sounding very exceptional here, to play on Putin.

Grant, thank you very much.

(CROSSTALK)

CARDONE: Look, I was more -- I was more impressed with Miley Cyrus' leadership over the last two weeks than I have been with Barack Obama's.

CAVUTO: Wow. Boy, if only we had had the video.

CARDONE: At least she made a decision.

CAVUTO: She did. And it might have been a bad decision, but she made a decision.

CARDONE: That's right.

CAVUTO: It's the first time I have heard the crisis actually brought to the Miley Cyrus level, but touche to you.

CARDONE: Wrecking ball.

CAVUTO: Grant Cardone, thank you very, very much.

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