By John Eberhard
Recently I saw an article on Newsmax.com about the fact that James Carville, a Democratic political strategist who worked for Clinton and who has written at least one book on politics, was advising President Obama to “panic.”
Carville stated “We are far past sending out talking points. Do not attempt to dumb it down. We cannot stand any more explanations. Have you talked to any Democratic senators lately? I have. It’s pretty damn clear they are not happy campers.
“This is what I would say to President Barack Obama: The time has come to demand a plan of action that requires a complete change from the direction you are headed.”
And then, Carville offers advice to the president in a CNN column. Step 1: “Fire somebody. No — fire a lot of people.”
I thought about this and decided this was actually pretty savvy political advice. If Obama were to fire Timothy Geitner and all his other top financial advisors right now, admit he screwed up, and change course, he could buy himself another year of broader public support, and maybe even get re-elected.
But I am sure he is quite incapable of that, because results are not what motivates him. Prior to being elected President, Obama has never worked at a job where he had to produce a measurable result. He has never been the CEO of a company, or the Mayor of a city, or Governor of a state, or even a sales manager.
He was a college professor, a community organizer, a state senator, a U.S. Senator, and then President. And often in his positions as state senator and U.S. Senator, he voted “present,” rather than commit himself.
I don’t think results even occur to President Obama. He never had to make sure a company was profitable. He never had to make sure the company made payroll. He never had to balance a budget for a city or a state. So results don’t even enter his equations. (And that’s I think one of the generalized problems with liberals of even politicians in general, that they don’t look at results to measure their actions.)
Obama probably looks at the situation now and thinks he’s done a pretty good job. Because he is a total ideologue. His measure of success is how much liberal/socialist policies he has been able to put into effect. And by that measure, he’s done pretty well, because he has rammed more socialist policies and actions down our throats than anyone since FDR.
Obama talks a lot about jobs. But since he doesn’t understand how jobs are created, or what really motivates employers to hire people, or how many of his actions have actually and totally discouraged businesses from hiring people, he thinks he can just talk about jobs or sort of “order” businesses to hire people and they will.
So the fact that the economy has been in a funk for 3 years doesn’t phase Obama. And the fact that unemployment has been over 9% for some time now, I don’t think those facts even register. Since his thinking follows the Marxist line of thought that businessmen and entrepreneurs are the bad guys (and he regularly demonizes business) he probably thinks they are not hiring because they’re just bad people and not appreciative of all the fine speeches he has made on the subject of jobs. (And yes I did says “Marxist” and for the uninitiated, that means “socialism” and if you don’t think what he’s doing is socialist, you need to read “The Communist Manifesto.”)
Obama is one of those guys who’s been mad for 35 years that more liberal/socialist stuff hasn’t been implemented and figures now is his chance to be the liberal hero.
But some other liberals are starting to realize that results DO matter, at least to the public, and so they are starting to seriously distance themselves from him.
Despite the fact that some liberals are beginning to realize that the state of the economy does matter for some reason to those dolts out in middle America, Obama isn’t one of them. He won’t be changing course, because he thinks he’s doing fine. And November, 2012 will be an evil surprise for him.