George W. Bush will go down as one of the worst Presidents in our history. Obama will go down as a mediocre president unless things change quickly.
Obama inherited a messed up economy and initially had the intelligence to keep experienced Wall Street types in place to guide him through the immediate crisis of the meltdown that could have easily turned into a depression. His vision to save GM was also correct for it would have caused massive additional job losses throughout the entire auto industry.
The major problem that Obama had during his first two years in office was inexperience. The price of experience has been very costly for him. First, he mishandled his health insurance initiative. He allowed it to take his eye off the economy and unemployment. To make it worse, he let the fight over shaping the plan to consume too much time. He was learning on the job how to guide a plan through congress. Instead of making his idea of the plan the starting point, he let congress argue about it for over a year before he got his hands dirty.
If he wants to earn a second term, he had better step up. He promised change. JUST DO IT!
1. Shake up his cabinet. Get rid of the Secretary of Treasury and the Federal Reserve Chairman and replace Wall Street with Main Street.
2. Focus on the economy. Push for an immediate stimulus plan, but do not do it without a detailed vision of how we overcome our longer-term deficit problem. The world, including our citizens, need to know that we are serious about overcoming this very serious deficit problem. This country is not going to lose its super power status because some other nation defeats us militarily. We will defeat ourselves from within by not addressing economic realities. (Sometimes I wonder if our enemies in the Middle East had this in mind all along. “Drain the evil empire of its economic mite and we will destroy them”.)
3. Protect our freedom; both from outside forces and from within. Many of our economic markets are no longer free. A small group of companies that have formed an oligopoly control many industries. These oligopolies are looking out for their rational self-interest – keep the oligopoly alive. The price to citizens is they have lost the freedom to choose between many independent companies competing for our business. Enforce anti-trust laws and be an honest umpire to assure everyone in the marketplace is playing fairly. In other word, have good efficient regulations in place that are enforced.
4. Amend and enforce laws relating to campaign contributions. As long as these oligopolies can buy votes from our politicians, we will not have members in congress and the oval office who represent we the people. Corporations and unions cannot vote. Why should they have the right to buy votes?
Mr. President, inexperience is no longer an excuse. Become proactive. Bring the change you promised and you will be re-elected. If you do not, your ranking as a President will be closer to George W. Bush rather than Abraham Lincoln.
Free Free Markets 