Back Again

Just returned from 3 weeks vacation (planned for over 30 years) to New Zealand to walk the Milford Track, Fish, Investigate NZ Olive Cultivars, and learn about New Zealand.  Wonderful Place!  Great Trip!

Below is my first post since returning almost two weeks ago – lots of work to catch up on when you are gone that long.

Is Mr. Obama the Problem?

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The United States economy is not performing well.  It can be argued that our institutions are held in lower regard than at any previous time.  More people are out of work than at any time since the 1930s.  The physical health of our nation’s people seems to be devolving into an epidemic of obesity and drug dependence.  The historically accepted family structure of man, wife, children, is under daily assault and by many accounts its demise is causing further major cultural problems from a weakening social fabric, increase in crime, drop in general ethics, to an education system that fails to educate in math and the sciences.  Many people feel that people are irreversibly damaging our environment and causing changes to our climate and to our entire ecosystem.  Our freedoms seem to be nibbled at each day to the point were it is now accepted by large portions of the population that “America” is no longer the nation with the most freedoms.  Surveys from all corners tell us that the American People are not as optimistic as they were previously and that most Americans feel our nation is in a possibly irreversible decline.

Is Mr. Obama the Problem?  The answer is, of course, “Yes and No.”  He is a part of the problem as is each leader of each institution in our land.  Pending your understanding of the role of leadership, he is either a critical part of the problem or just one of many components.

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graphic from Leadership-Quotes.org

The reason for asking the question is that we have an opportunity in 2012 to effect at least a partial solution to our nation’s problems.  We can choose to retain or replace Mr. Obama as President.  Or, we may choose to limit his power somewhat by electing a Congress that has majorities from the opposition Republican Party.

I know there are fans of the President and those who think he can do nothing right.  My problem with both these groups is that both overstate their cases.  This leads to ‘solutions’ that tend to be emotion-driven, not reason-driven.

My answer is that Mr. Obama is a very big part of the problem and that we would do well to replace him in 2012.  I don’t think he is a bad person as many do.  I need to know him better to know things like whether he is good or bad .  I think he is a vain person, far too absorbed with how he is viewed by others.  I have wondered since he began his campaign in 2007 about “Hope and Change.”  It was Napoleon who said, “A leader is a dealer in hope.”  I think Mr. Obama has more similarities to Mr. Bonaparte than we want to imagine.

I disagree with many, if not most, of Mr. Obama’s positions. He has more faith in government and bureaucracies than I do.  He thinks more government is the solution to most problems.   I think less government would be better.  He is of the belief that highly educated people are wiser than those with hard experience.  He has surrounding himself with people who are clones of himself – privileged education, a lack of experience outside of the protective walls of academia or government employment, a belief in his superior intellect.  It bothers me that of all his cabinet members, there is hardly any experience outside of academia or government.  His support group, like himself is one dimensional.

.Most of all, I think he is lacking as a leader and what our government needs is a true leader, one who can make people believe that what they are doing is both the right thing and the thing they want to do.  Today, polls show that the majority of Americans neither believe that we are doing the right things or that we want to do the things our government is asking us to do.  We are lacking a leader who understands that, ” The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”- Peter Drucker (emphasis mine)  Mr. Obama has both personally taken credit for all accomplishments during his watch but has also blamed others for the failures.

Is Mr. Obama the Problem?  Yes.