Freedom New Mexico
Maybe we are mired in debt, hobbled with less-than-excellent credit, because our chief executive has no experience beyond that which he has gained on the job.
He spoke Monday and used the credit downgrade to promote tax reform “that will ask those who can afford it to pay their own share.” How inspiring. It was a euphemistic way of continuing his losing crusade to soak the rich, who are the same people we need to reward for creating prosperity and jobs. Taxes on success are punitive. They are not a reward. A more inspiring suggestion — one of hope and change — would involve a flat national value-added sales tax.
President Barack Obama is smart and well educated. He is affable and presidential. He has a gift for public speaking. He has the rare intellectual prowess for what some consider the most important job in the world.
None of that compensates for the fact that we elected him to the country’s biggest and most challenging executive position despite his complete lack of executive experience. He was never a governor, the manager of a big business, a small business or even a law firm. His resume impresses from an academic perspective, in that he graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. From the moment he left Harvard, Obama began building a resume of underachievement. He lectured at the University of Chicago, never aspiring to become an associate professor, much less a professor. He dabbled in “community organizing,” which sounds like a line from someone without a job. He practiced law for a few years and then quit. As a U.S. senator he voted “present,” committing to no position, 130 times. On the presidential campaign trail, he told of having his credit card declined while traveling just seven years earlier. It is useful that he has experienced the economic struggles of the lower-middle class, but the fact he was broke nine years out of Harvard speaks to his lack of post-academic accomplishment. He would have had a hard time convincing a board of directors to hire him as CEO of a small or medium-sized company in 2008, yet we made him chief executive of the U.S.-government and asked him to lead.
He took over an office that had been poorly managed by his predecessor, a man with comparable Ivy League credentials who had served as the executive of a large investment group and the country’s second-most populated state. Bush, a big-spending progressive Republican who ran up the debt by $4.97 trillion in eight years, handed over a government with a AAA credit rating that was potentially imperiled by a debt of $10.6 trillion.
Obama’s challenge was to fix the mess with change. Instead, he oversaw the addition of $4 trillion to our debt in just three years. He escalated wars that we hoped he would end. He pushed for and achieved more federal entitlements (i.e. health care for all) when he should have reined them in. On almost every count, he took a mismanaged organization and managed it worse.
One can point blame in multiple directions regarding the fiasco with our government’s credit downgrade. Blame Americans who want free health care. Blame Americans who refuse to work, asking others to support them. Blame politicians who pander to special interests. Blame high taxes. Blame tax breaks for the rich. Blame away.
If IBM, Microsoft or any major organization were hit with a credit downgrade, shareholders and the board of directors would blame their chief executive — the one person most responsible for protecting the general welfare of the organization. So far, Obama’s lack of experience shows. The hope and change Americans voted for has become more of the same. More spending, more debt and more economic bewilderment. Obama has given us much, much more of the same while learning on the job.
