Here’s a list of things a community organizer never has to do. He doesn’t have to:
Make tough decisions
Make payroll
Hire and fire
Do the actual work
Live with the consequences
Here’s a list of things a president must do:
Make tough decisions
Hire and fire
Do actual work
Live with consequences
*funding optional and dependent on Congress aka The Board
You know, President Obama sounded like a community organizer last night–he was going to get that awful corporation. Bad corporation! Bad, bad corporation! Corporations are evil.
In the real world, and if President Obama has any sense, he would have called the CEO of BP on Day One and had a discussion about the plan of action and met every week to tweak the plan. In the meantime, he would consult with experts, consult with the local Governors, get the best equipment necessary, and turn it around quickly. He would have correction-of-errors meetings, redirect the action plan, and then, communicate regularly with the American people about the progress.
After the crisis was solved, he would ask for an analysis from the Governors, BP and an independent third party who understands disaster and crisis management. Then, together, they’d put out a correction of errors and plan for future mishaps (bound to happen–life is not perfect).
Finally, after the problem is solved, corrected, and a plan for the future is in place, then liability is assigned. That is a legal process not an executive branch process.
But the President has NOT done that. He has made the oil company the enemy, but this enemy has to do the work to fix things. He has not made a plan for fear of looking like he’s colluding with his enemy.
President Obama has put himself in a horrendous double bind. Corporations are evil, so he can’t work with one to solve the biggest environmental disaster in a generation. He wants to assign blame, but even if he puts every BP worker in jail forever, the problem doesn’t get solved.
The skills that make a good community organizer necessarily mean that the organizer is outside the system, trying to change the system, and decrying the awfulness of the system. But President Obama IS THE SYSTEM now. He hates and loves the very authority that he must wield. His tossing and turning rhetorically and his inaction are a product of his belief system.
According to President Obama’s ideology, there is no winning this fight against the Man. He’s dismayed to learn that he is The Man. And people, even the and especially, the most liberal leftists want The Man to fix it even as they hate and resent The Man.
An executive is used to this antipathy and lives with it. It’s human nature to hate the decision-makers. I remember when my friend talked about his employees. He said, “Melissa, employees will hate you, that’s just the way it works.” Now, that’s an extreme and pessimistic view, but it is true that every employee believes he can do a better job than the boss and imagines a better world if he were in charge.
President Obama is not used to this dynamic. He was used to being the resentful underling, powerless and giving voice to the discontent of many. It’s a job that was morally self-aggrandizing with little risk along with the reward of feeling smug and superior.
But what does one do when the mantle of responsibility is yours and yours alone? Well, President Obama hasn’t done well shifting his psychology. He likes being the authority. He doesn’t like the responsibility. In fact, he continues to blame and shift, to evade and decry and it seems empty, and now, a little strange.
You’re the leader of the free world. People expect a certain amount of leadership in that role–even the ones who claim to hate authority and leadership.
This should be a lesson to the Left. You despise authority and your ideology would have society descend into licentiousness but when push comes to shove, you see the mismanagement and injustice and suddenly traditional values like responsibility and clarity of purpose seem important. You wanted, sought, nuance, remember? Well, you got it, but nuance and dithering might suit a Senator or a community organizer, but it’s a terrible skill set for the President of the United States.
Being a community organizer is not enough preparation for the job before President Obama, but America is stuck. We get the President we deserve and want. We wanted hope and change aka an empty slogan delivered eloquently by a man given to flights of lush rhetoric but who has next to nothing to back it up.
President Obama is exactly the man he campaigned as being. He has not lied or misled the American people. He is exactly the man America expected. It’s a little revolting to see the convenient remorse.
Barack Obama is a community organizer. Still. And that’s the problem.