Obama 2009 Performance Review: Stuck in the Muck

If we examine President Obama’s performance in terms of the five most common reasons why CEOs get fired, the analysis is quite revealing.

Reason #1: Failure to deliver what was promised upon hiring

Where do we begin? The economy remains a mess. Unemployment keeps increasing. There is mistake after mistake, with no real sense of urgency about solving any particular problem. All Obama does is tell us how tough it is and how much we will have to suffer. Bad ideas continue, like closing Guantanamo, and trying terrorists in the U.S. court system. For killing thousands of Americans, terrorists get American citizenship.

Reason #2: Over optimism

Homeland Security’s Chief Officer, Napolitano, said it best. After a terrorist successfully defeated security measures, boarded a U.S. aircraft in Amsterdam, but (through his own stupidity) failed to detonate the bomb strapped to his body and was apprehended by a passenger, Napolitano’s comment was, “The system worked!” And, within hours, Americans get subjected to further humiliation at airports.

Meanwhile, during the most extraordinary security lapse since 9/11/2001, the President remains on vacation while the news media drives the country into turmoil. Any governor or mayor knows that if these serious events happen (on Christmas Day no less), they better get back to their desks and lead the investigations.

Obama hardly ever uses the word “terrorist” in his speeches. Is he afraid?

Misfiring, lost opportunity, and premature ejaculation are the strategies of this administration.

Reason #3: People problems

The second responsibility of any chief executive is to put in place the people who can make the leader’s vision happen. There is, apparently, only one visionary in this administration, Hillary Clinton. Everyone else seems to be a problem, whether it's his spokespeople, his chief advisers (a bunch of Chicago politicians), or his own unenthusiastic, visionless style. We have no national team with national experience. We have enormous inexperience and a couple rogues, like the U.S. Attorney General whose decision to do terrorist show trials near Ground Zero will only accelerate terrorist attack attempts. These trials should be done in The Hague or some remote village in Siberia.

Reason #4: AWOL

This president has visited more countries than any first-year president ever has. Why? He has spent most of this time sucking up to foreigners instead of stating carefully fashioned, clearly understandable United States policy. Then, he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, an award he should have refused as being unqualified. In pursuit of mindless visibility, the Nobel committee made the award and, in the process, diminished its importance. Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech required that he admit to the world that he had no real accomplishments or credentials to justify the award, except that it's really tough running two wars at the same time.

This kind of travel and vacuous activity is usually reserved for the second term when a president has very little to do and is out of ideas. Obama has started early on his second term.

Reason #5: Stuck in the muck

What has been accomplished for the average American this year? Banks, insurance companies, Wall Street, the credit card industry, and real estate all have been bailed out or protected by the American taxpayer. Banks, while refusing to loan money to help restart the economy, hoarded plenty of cash to pay enormous bonuses to the very perpetrators who have destroyed the lives of millions of Americans. The insurance industry, led by AIG, will pay the largest bonuses in history after perpetrating unspeakable damage on America’s economy for which we have given them hundreds of billions. The credit card industry, completely unbridled and arrogant, continues to gouge Americans without punishment, without regulation, and without shame (thanks, of course, mostly to U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd D-CT). The real estate industry, led by the same perpetrators of the last collapse, have found new ways to package mortgages, perpetuate credit default swaps, and other predatory financial practices. And then there is Wall Street, the theme park of American greed. They never stop, they always take, and they always get away with it. America is the laughing stock of Wall Street. (This, of course, mostly engineered by America’s business schools who look down on the American working person and only look up to the person who makes the most money and acts like the biggest bully.)

This president has done nothing to reassure the American public that something has been done or will be done to get this quintumverate of economic disaster and greed under control.

Even healthcare reform will turn out to be a financial bonanza for every key economic player, especially the insurance industry, courtesy of U.S. Senator “Goofy” Lieberman, except, of course, American taxpayers and American patients. The quintumverate wins again.

Summary Assessment

Presidents get about 210 days to get their vision launched, their dreams in wide circulation, and to marshal their forces to achieve what they set out to accomplish. Then the postmortems begin, coupled with midterm elections. Following the midterms, comes to 24-month effort at reelection. This president has effectively missed three crucial milestones to his future success: the failure to state a vision this country could strive for (“change” is a jingle, not a vision); failure to assemble a credible, powerful, highly accomplished national team; and failure to execute a credible, productive sense of urgency or crisis management so necessary to mobilize public attitudes and public support. No American president in history, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, has been presented with such a monumental series of opportunities for great, even immortal leadership.

His legacy, thus far, has been to resuscitate a moribund Republican Party, help us all forget just how bad a president George W. Bush was, and to wonder if anyone actually knows or understands the state of our Union.

Washington D.C., to quote futurist John Naisbitt, “is the theme park of American democracy.” But, as it stands at the end of 2009, most of the rides are broken or in very bad repair, and the guy we hired to fix them (who promised change) has yet to show up for work. He’s out there stuck in the muck.

Any other CEO with this track record would be looking for work, after having received a tremendous severance package.

Maybe it’s not too early to ask . . . “What would Hillary, or Sarah, or somebody else do?”