Archive for October, 2009
Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Bad Management
So, New Jersey is in as sad a case as it has ever been. Sounds like they are in the best of hands…
The Answer is of Course No
Is the World Bank too big to fail? Of course not. It should be judged on its success and its return to its partners. If it is successful, then it should be self sustaining. If it isn’t, well then you know what should happen.
A Scathing Rebuke of President Obama
I think this piece says it all.
Some snippets:
After John F. Kennedy was elected, President Dwight D. Eisenhower spent many hours with him. One of the key lessons was this: “All the decisions you will make,” said Eisenhower, “will be hard decisions.” Dwight went on to explain that the easy things will be tended to by cabinet secretaries and others of the administration with executive authority. But the tough ones will always be kicked to higher levels to be decided. At every level, the decisions become more and more difficult until, at last, the presidential inbox is filled with nothing but the most difficult items.
Fortunately for Kennedy and the country, he already had experience facing very difficult decisions and for the most part was prepared for the inbox. Yet he was not so proud that he never asked his predecessor for advice. The photo at left won the 1962 Pulitzer Prize. It shows JFK and DDE walking at Camp David during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy had asked Eisenhower to come there to give advice. It’s worth noting that Eisenhower was a Republican but it didn’t matter to Kennedy.
It is impossible to imagine President Obama inviting any former president to Camp David to help him steer a better course. Don’t waste a second imagining either Bush could ever be invited. As Bill Clinton has said, he hardly ever gets even a phone call from Obama. Carter? You can imagine it, but ain’t. gonna. happen.
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As others have exhaustively pointed out, there is nothing at all in Obama’s resume that shows he ever made highly difficult decisions that depended, at the end, on his own personal reservoir of wisdom and experience. So he does not tackle the inbox because its contents are above his competence. He tends instead to lesser matters that match his lower level of competence and gratifyingly feed the ego. And so he flies to Copenhagen to deliver a speech of no significance on a matter of no consequence. Why? Because he can do that – simply standing in front of a crowd reading eloquently from a teleprompter he can handle quite well.
