President Obama has just created a panel to figure out how to get our debt under control.  Even when he makes a decision, such as this one, it is to pass the buck to someone else to do the heavy lifting.  His attempt to overhaul health care turned into the Harry and Nancy Show.  Obama campaigned and gave speeches while Pelosi and Reid shut out the Republicans and created the bill that could not be passed.  Obama is now trying to put lipstick on that pig, by calling for a bipartisan meeting.  But instead of starting over and getting ideas from everyone, they are basically going to pick over the stinking corpse of the bill that the Democrats could not get passed.  It is obvious that the real objective is to either get some Republicans to sign on or to use the meeting as a club to beat the Republicans as the “party of No.”

Stop Me Before I Spend

This president can’t seem to control himself and he finds that he painted himself into a corner.  If he tries to raise taxes on those who make less than $250,000 per year he will be breaking a major campaign promise.  If he stops spending on his own, he will lose the left which is about the only support he has remaining.  So he calls in Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to co-chair a committee charged with making the president a tailor made fig leaf, to allow him to cut spending and raise taxes, while shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I can’t go against the excellent advice of this august commission.”

If he wants to cut spending, he can just cut spending.  He doesn’t need a commission to do so.  How about an across the board spending freeze, except for national defense, until the economy grows enough to balance the budget and not with gimmicks like increasing discretionary spending now 24% and then saying you will freeze that same spending for the next three years?  How about freezing government hiring?  How about returning $500 billion in unspent stimulus money and $400 billion in repaid TARP money, plus interest, to the Treasury?  Don’t hold your breath.  That would require someone with executive experience who knows how to make a decision, rather than deliberating, like a legislator.  Sarah Palin comes to mind, as does George Bush (I & II), Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan.  These experienced executives knew how to put together a budget and make decisions.  Chris Christie in New Jersey was just sworn in last month as governor and he immediately identified the problem as too much spending and got to work cutting it back.  All that President Obama seems to know how to do is talk. 

If we start advertising now, we may get enough resumes to review to find a replacement by 2012.

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.

President Barack Obama, took office with historically high approval ratings.  Congress ended its last session with historically low approval ratings.  So why is Barack Obama, the head of the Democratic Party, taking a back seat on the economic stimulus bill while Nancy Pelosi calls the shots?

President Obama campaigned on ending the divisiveness in Washington, as did George Bush, but bipartisanship is far more than dinner parties with conservative columnists, cocktails with leaders of Congress, welcoming ideas from Republicans that will eventually be ignored by Speaker Pelosi.  If bipartisanship was one of your themes, pay attention, there was bipartisanship on the stimulus vote, it was bipartisan opposition.

Taking family planning and some sod for the Washington Mall out of the package, does not magically turn this turkey into a stimulus.  It’s time for President Obama to do some arm twisting within his own party or his critical first 100 days will be a flameout.  Take a lesson from history, Presidents Carter and Clinton both took office with large Democratic majorities in Congress and tried to please them and neither could.  Clinton had a Republican Congress two years later and ended up with a pretty successful presidency.  Carter didn’t.

It’s your administration Mr. President, don’t let Nancy Pelosi snuff it out.

Here’s where we are four weeks after the election:

1. Appointments — With the Thanksgiving shortened week, it was mostly packaging of the previously announced appointments.  Monday was going to be the big day, with the formal announcement of Hillary and Holder.  They had to get Bill Clinton’s ducks in a row, and have him measured for a leash.
2. Dow Jones Industrial Average — Up 675 points. Team Obama finally got a win.  One of the reasons is that Obama has stopped talking about eliminating the Bush tax cuts early, but letting them expire in 2010.  Also, he seems to be assembling an experienced economic team, well known to Wall Street, which doesn’t hurt.
3. The New Leader – Obama has answered critics who say the team he is assembling looks a lot like the old Clinton White House, by saying that they are “Experienced, Yet Fresh.”  He is facing grumblings on his left, which brings into question how is he going to keep this team of wild horses under control?

The Challenge for Obama

Where is Obama’s base of support?  Where can he fall back on for strength?  He may well be pulling together a team of experienced hands for the various departments, but not all of them are cut from the same mold and there will be some tugging and pulling.  How does he keep them in check and how does he get them back in line?  In other words, where are his reinforcements?

In another post, I mention how past presidents, most of whom had executive experience as governors, brought some of their loyal people with them.  These were people who believed in their candidate and had been with him for a number of years.  That loyalty can be called in, like chits, when you need to win a battle.

It took Johnson a while, about two years, to get his people in the administration since he had inherited the Kennedy team when he ascended to the presidency, but he did have eleven years in the House and twelve years in the Senate, including six years as Senate Majority Leader.  So he had a lot of markers to call in if he needed them.

Kennedy was probably closest to Obama in lack of experience including no executive experience outside of the Navy, but he did have eight years in the Senate.  In addition, he had Papa Joe Kennedy, who had many strings of his own including being a former Ambassador to England; he had his own blood brother as Attorney General; and another brother Ted would be elected to the Senate two years later.  So while Jack Kennedy may not personally have had a lot of pull, his family had plenty.

Nixon was a former two term Vice President.  Ford had been House Minority Leader.  Carter had been governor and was able to bring some of his former team with him, as was  Reagan who had served two terms as governor of California, and Bill Clinton who was both Attorney General and Governor of Arkansas.  George Bush Senior was Vice President, and George W. was governor of Texas.  They all had many connections and a lot of political IOUs.

But what does Barack Obama do, after the glow of history is replaced by the hard work of governing?  It is more likely that Barack Obama wrote a lot of political IOUs rather than him holding them.  Many of his confidents uncovered during the campaign, turned out to be less than appealing to the nation as a whole.  When the going gets tough, who’s going to have Barack Obama’s back?  Who can he turn to and say, I need this one and because of thus and so, without having to say it, you owe me?  He has very little history with his team.  So when he needs a favor, he will have to deal almost from the get go.  Whose career has he made, such that he can ask for payback?

Experience Counts

Experience counts not just in knowing how to do a job, but it also counts in terms of who you know.  Rarely in our history has there been someone who has so little experience inside or outside the beltway.  This may well result in a very weak president.  For all of our sakes, I hope I am wrong.

This Sunday morning brought the news that Colin Powell had endorsed Barack Obama.  This was deemed as anywhere from a major setback for the McCain campaign to the final nail in his political coffin.  However, to most people paying attention to Powell’s career this is not really a surprise.    Colin Powell’s is a great American story.  Someone who rose through the ranks to the top of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  He wasn’t a West Point graduate, but rather went to City College in New York and joined the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps.  His service is worthy of our admiration and gratitude.

Politically, Colin Powell is not a conservative.  He is an advocate of Affirmative Action and he is pro-abortion.  He didn’t campaign for black conservative candidates like Michael Steele in Maryland or Lynn Swan in Pennsylvania.  He didn’t speak out about the treatment of Clarence Thomas in his Supreme Court hearings and the way those hearings where conducted by Joe Biden.  So his endorsement of Obama should neither be surprising or earth shattering.

In his Sunday interview he “expressed displeasure with the direction of the Republican Party.”  This, according to the New York Times, was “another dispiriting setback to Republicans.”  Really?  When do Republicans win elections and when do they lose them?

When Republicans remain true to conservative principles they tend to win elections.  When they move to the center to appeal to moderates they tend to lose.  Why is that?

A Battleground poll taken this past August shows it quite clearly.  When  asked the question, “When thinking about politics and government, do you consider yourself to be…”

1. Very Conservative
2. Somewhat Conservative
3. Moderate
4. Somewhat Liberal
5. Very Liberal
6. Unsure or refused to answer

The poll results were:

• Very Conservative — 20%
• Somewhat Conservative — 40%
• Moderate — 2%
• Somewhat Liberal — 27%
• Very Liberal — 9%
• Unsure/Refuse to Answer — 3%

What is most interesting is that only 2% consider themselves to be moderate, and yet conservatives are being repeatedly counseled to reach out to moderates.  Why put forth all that effort for 2% of the population?  If you combine the first two categories, those who consider themselves to be conservative or very conservative, it totals 60% of the population.  Republicans should be able to win elections all day long with those numbers.

The Battleground Poll is a well respected bipartisan poll jointly conducted by a Democratic polling group and a Republican polling group.  What is even more interesting is that they include this question in every survey, and the results have been very consistent over time.  In the thirteen Battleground polls taken between June 2002 and August 2008, those who consider themselves conservatives have ranged from a low of 58% to a high of 63%, pretty consistent indeed.

When Republicans stick to core conservative principles they generally win elections.  When they took control of Congress for the first time in forty years it was because they ran on Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America.  It advocated smaller government, personal responsibility, tort reform and term limits among other things.  This resonated with people who are fed up with Washington and a government that grows without bound.  When they got in power and started spending like liberals, they got tossed out on their butts, as well they should.  If the choice in the voting booth is between a professional liberal (Democrats) and the amateur liberal (moderate Republicans) most folks are going to go with the pro.

Reagan, the truest conservative won the Presidency twice, and easily.  George Bush senior won his first term and then raised taxes breaking his “Read My Lips” pledge.  Out he went.  Clinton won two terms and neither time garnered a majority of the popular vote.  George W. Bush ran as a conservative and won two terms, but they were close races.  Why?  He talked about being a “compassionate conservative” which many took as a code word for being a moderate and not that great a difference from the Democrats.

The untold story is that a significant majority of Americans consider themselves conservative and the closer the candidate adheres to conservative principles (e.g., Reagan) the larger the margin of victory.  The further they move a way, the closer the final tally.