By SHEILAH PEPPER
The Gazette StaffThe President and those around him are theorizers, idealogues, and constant campaigners. They are clearly not doers and deciders. They have little, if any, real problem-solving experience and no business background whatever. They come largely from academia, professional politics and left-of-center think tanks.
Anyone who has worked at an executive level knows that you are judged by your response to crisis situations. Yes, how you handle staff, budgets, planning and so on is important, but problem-solving will often make or break a career.
I believe the two most important words in the next presidential election, regardless of whether Mr. Obama runs or not will be "leadership" and "competence."
I don't believe that Obama and the people around that he has appointed are necessarily incompetent. They have a transformative agenda and a limited time to get it done. They are hell-bent on sticking to that agenda no matter what public opinion may be because they know this is the only opportunity they will ever have to put the progressive agenda in place.
You don't need to be an ex-CEO to know that the Jones Act could have been temporarily waived in the first days of the oil crisis to let hundreds more skimmers in to ameliorate the damage. Obama knows that - but did not do it - possibly to assuage the unions, possibly to not let this crisis go to waste - that is, to push the green "oil is bad" agenda.
He didn't need the job-killing six-month blanket moratorium. He could have simply ordered higher levels of safety inspections for the existing deep water rigs and let construction go forward on new ones. But he wanted to placate his angry Left. Would he sacrifice many thousands of good jobs to do that?
Well, it looks that way. Otherwise, why the stubborn refusal to rescind the moratorium and, in fact, continue to fight the federal courts?
In the lower ranks, there is naturally incompetence prevailing especially in a brand new kind crisis because. Outside of the military, that is how government is. Booms from all over the country were late arriving and some have not yet arrived. The sand berms Gov. Jindal wanted were blocked several times due to sheer paperwork and other mistakes on the part of the bureaucracy, to the point where Jindal understandably is fit to be tied.
The administration, in the face of awful job numbers, insists the recovery in underway. They have punished business people with more punishment coming in 2011 in huge tax hikes.
But when they find that Wall Street has closed the cash faucet on the Democrats, Rahm Emmanuel and others rush out to tell business people they are pro-business. Big donors are wising up. However, I can't understand how those who got in bed with the administration did not realize that they would have to take orders from their masters in the White House. That's how corporate fascism works, guys. A pox on all of them.
The lack of leadership charge will likely stick. It will have "legs" because of the constant blame game. A real leader first seeks ways to fix the problem, and later looks, not to fix blame, but to take strong measures to avoid the same problem in the future.
When you seek to take over health care, portions of the finance and auto industries and clobber oil companies, then tax small business to death, it not hard to see how the man in the street might think you are anti-business. The job numbers alone indicate this.
Business people are sitting on cash and not hiring until they can see a more certain future.
Right now, that future looks scary.
They know the president cannot make things better by constantly running out to Peoria and Kansas City to tell folks that things are going to get better. They know that the policies currently in place need to be totally reversed if there is hope for the economy.
They know the president will not do that - so his words ring empty. As Dr. Thomas Sowell said recently, these speeches amount to just another "prissy little sermonette."
However, a new Congress with a few ounces of common sense could put a stop to a lot of this craziness come fall.
Can you see November?
Copyright©2010SheilahPepper
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