The balloons and bunting have been picked up, the Washington Mall has been swept, the ball gowns put away. The campaign, the election, the historic celebration are now in the history books. It’s time to govern. Sadly, with only three weeks in office, President Obama’s lack of experience is on full display.
Due to the looming financial crisis, the transition in power was unprecedented in the level of cooperation between the departing Bush administration and the incoming Obama team. Obama said he needed the second half of the $700 billion, Bush put in the request. Everyone knew what problem number one was. The economy was in crisis.
When Dealing With a Crisis, You Lead, You Don’t Delegate
When United Airways Flight 1549, which would end up in the Hudson River, was climbing after takeoff, the co-pilot was at the controls. When the plane struck a flight of birds and lost power, Captain Sullenberger coolly said two words, “My aircraft.” The co-pilot responded, “Your aircraft,” the captain took the controls and the first officer then set about trying to re-start the engines.
In the midst of this economic crisis, that President Obama keeps saying we have to fix now, he let Nancy Pelosi run the show, while he took a victory lap, visiting the White House press pool, writing executive orders closing Guantanamo, and speaking to al Arabiya. Nancy Pelosi was furiously stuffing the stimulus turkey with pork, and President Obama was inviting Republicans in for tea, thinking that by doing so, a new era of bipartisanship would emerge.
In several corporate jobs that I have had there were times of crisis. If we had to drastically cut expenses to deal with the crisis, it was all hands on deck. It wasn’t see what you can do and get back to me. It was, “Be on the conference call at 3PM prepared to tell the Chief, how you are meeting your expense reduction targets.” All senior managers were on the call and all got a turn to tell the Chief what they were contributing or, gulp, where they were falling short. If you were falling short, make no mistake, you better have a damn good reason and whether or not you did, your future career was now under a microscope. The point is, like Captain Sullenberger, in times of crisis, the leader is unmistakably in charge.
President Obama let Nancy Pelosi craft this disaster, without strong guidelines of what he would or would not accept, and did not demand that Republicans be involved from the start. You reap what you sew. Now he is scrambling to drag this stinking corpse across the finish line and it’s not pretty.
Why did this happen? Because President Obama was a Community Organizer. He never ran a business. He never held an executive position in government. His gossamery resume was obvious, but ignored. Sarah Palin must be shaking her head in disbelief.
Running Back to Safety Zone of Campaigning
Barack Obama was a master on the campaign trail, first dispatching Hillary Clinton, and then deftly outmaneuvering John McCain. So what does the inexperienced man do when he’s under stress? Go back to what he’s good at. This week we saw President Obama back on the campaign trail, with the same rhetoric. The problem is, you can take a fair degree of license with what you say on the campaign trail. When you govern, you have to deal with reality. George Bush is gone. Bashing Bush may have gotten Obama elected, but he’s got to put that one out to pasture. His claim that tax cuts caused this financial problem, and that the past eight years have been an economic disaster, just don’t hold up. It makes him look clueless. Sure it fires up the base, but so what. We need solutions, not pep rallies. Tax cuts boosted the economy for Kennedy, for Reagan, for Bush. In short, they work. Obama may not like them, but they work. To say otherwise is like hanging a sign over his head, saying Under Construction.
Cabinet Picks
And the late night talk show hosts were wondering what they were going to do without Bush in office. The hits just keep coming. Once again, you have to ask, who’s in charge? How did all of these slip through the cracks? Richardson, Geithner, Daschle, Soldis, Nancy Killefer, Eric Holder. Sure it’s noble that Obama took responsibility for Daschle. But if you stay with him too long you look, uh, inexperienced? With all of these problems, someone’s head should roll. The President is delegating what he shouldn’t and what he should delegate is a mess.
International
President Obama was supposed to usher in a new era of harmony in our relations with other countries. But what has happened?
- Ahmadinejad– Candidate Obama said he would talk with Iran without preconditions. Ahmadinejad said he wanted an apology before he would meet with Obama
- Several countries harshly criticize the stimulus package and its “Buy American” provision, raising the specter of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that deepened the Great Depression
- Iran shoots a missile into space to celebrate the Iranian revolution, with the subtext, “That was when we boldly took over your Embassy and held it for 444 days during the weak presidency of Jimmy Carter.”
- Pakistan releases A.Q. Khan the nuclear proliferator in a snub to the U.S.
- Kyrgyzstan tells U.S. to close military base that is key supply route to Afghanistan
I hope President Obama is a quick study, or we’re in for a long grim four years.
