The top guys with Vito were always happy and made their guys happy. Michael pissed a lot of his family off. Alienated Tom. Sent Rocco on a suicide mission. Pentangelli committed suicide. Had Fredo killed. Only top guy that didn't get hurt was Al Neri.
shareWell Coppola in interviews says he didn't like Michael being looked on as a hero in the first film and wanted to basically destroy him.
But then he makes Vito , also a criminal into a hero so go figure.
Michael is able to keep the business side of it alive but fails to make it a stable family. The whole part three is about him trying to repent the terrible things he's done. Vito Don Corleone always put his family first.
shareI've always viewed this as intentional by Coppola. One of the great things about Part II is the juxtaposition of the two stories being told - Vito's rise to a respected Don alongside Michael's fall from one.
shareThere are three ways to maintain loyalty in underlings: fear, financial reward, and personal friendship, with friendship being the least stable and reliable strategy. Michael figured out early on that personal friendship takes a back seat to the other two, so he didn't bother cultivating close personal ties with most of the people who worked for him. Carrot for the loyal and stick for the disloyal worked just fine for him.
shareYou don't just dispense carrots and sticks afterwards, as if they had no effect on loyalty or lack thereof. And those relationships that Michael rejected, were what made Vito so successful.
shareI'd argue that everything listed in the OP is what made Michael NOT such a great Don. He's been the unquestioned boss about three years at the start of this movie, and already he's facing a huge insurrection that ends with several of his top men dead (Rocco and Frankie) or in jail (Willi Cicci), his own brother sleeping with the fishes, and the remaining members of his family completely estranged from him. On top of that, he's also responsible for the SUPER high profile assassination of a rival Mafioso-- isn't Rocco's name on the board at the senate hearings? The same guy who later blows away another guy in front of a BUTT TON of cameras? I know that Tom would probably be able to wrangle a plausible deniability defense and Michael would never see the inside of a courtroom, but, that was one sloppy hit, and a potentially huge risk for the family.
Vito held it together for about a quarter century. Michael got a third of a decade. I'd say Mikey dropped the ball big time.
Except that by the end of the film all his enemies are dead and he has defeated the senate hearings. Yes, absolutely his personal life is a shambles and it's largely of his own doing, but it was all at the expense of business, which we can see by the time of GFIII, has far outdone all his former peers and even his own father. That's the difference between the two men, Vito paid equal attention to his family and the business, and did well in both, whereas Michael neglected one at the expense of the other, with predictable results.
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