The honeymoon appears to be coming to a close with President Obama. Some of his ideas are now up and running and people are making judgements. So if you ever wanted an example of why US Presidents age at twice the normal speed, this is certainly one of the contributing reasons.
Unfortunate as it is, everyone is capable of complaining, but only a small percent are capable of coming up with a fix. So when something that is difficult to deal with is being criticized by people who have not a clue how to fix it, it sets up a situation that can be studied by psychologists as a good example of human nature.
There is no doubt President Obama inherited a mess, much more so than the average president. Between wars and the economic meltdown, that is a tall order. So when he started to make decisions and take actions, people simply put their faith in him. But as per usual, things this tough do not fly as graceful as an Eagle when launched. There will be several tweaks along the way as unforseen bugs are discovered and worked out. This is true for any leader anyplace in politics or not.
This is called research and development, and in many cases this is done with an offline model. Both failures and successes of those offline models shape the final product. Unfortunately politicians do not have the luxury of an offline model, they are working with the real deal so everyone is a critic at every step along the way.
The biggest problem when dealing with the economic situation is there are so many independent people who influence the outcome. Take for example the banks that got bailed out. No sooner did they get the money did they turn around and bite the hand that fed them with rate hikes.
Apparently one of the biggest complaints is the government is getting way to involved with a lot of big companies like General Motors without a clear exit plan. Again this is a complaint by people who have not a clue. So it must be explained to them that the model needs to be up and running before you can figure out how to get out once it is running well on its own. So the situation is actually criticizing a work in progress.
So the political tiptoes as they would be are dealing with people who like to complain but have no idea how to fix things, while having the ability to make the Presidents life miserable sums it up well. So the need to appease these people and explain to them every step along the way what they are doing may be the best answer. That does not consider that the Republican party will be doing its best to be in a position to get elected by exploiting questionable moves. But that is what politics is all about.
So it would seem the best way to deal with things is openly explaining step by step in small pieces what Obama is doing and why. It should provide some education as well as turn down some of the heat.
Interesting concept. “Explain to the people that the model needs to be up and running before you can figure out how to out once it is running on it’s own”.
Every entrepreneur and investor will tell you to have an exit strategy in place at the time you begin a new venture; not rely on seeing how it goes and flying by the seat of your pants in order to figure out your exit strategy. That type of thinking is done by the people that have no clue.
The people that do have a clue are perfectly right in questioning an exit strategy at this point in time.
Obama may have inherited a mess but from an economic standpoint he is making things much, much worse by:
1. Letting weak institutions linger and not go into bankruptcy when in reality, they will emerge from bankruptcy and become stronger.
2. Selectively favoring unions over common bondholders in the automotive restructuring.
3. Proposing to give the Federal Reserve more oversight powers when they were the ones who created this mess by keeping interest rates too low for too long and serially blowing bubbles (the dot come bubble then the housing bubble.)
4. Not cutting back on spending but accelerating government spending in an attempt to improve the economy when in reality he is just digger us into a bigger hole.
5. Crazy bailout programs to keep people in their homes and prop up asset prices at all costs to the long term health of the economy. In reality the best cure is for housing prices to become affordable again.
6. Talking about tough choices while not dealing with high levels of employee costs in the government salaries and benefits. I guess this is a sacred cow. As is the gov’t unions who should not have this kind of power when the US runs a 3 trillion dollar deficit.
Obama is making a bad situation much worse. He can hide behind what was given to him for another few months but after that he owns the mess he made. Sadly his performance will make people more bitter after his hope & change rhetoric and there won’t be a black American president for a long time after this guy.
-Mike