Barack Obama Doodler-In-Chief

"Americans coming together" is a theme of this week's Democratic National Convention. People stop to look at a mural by artist Shepard Fairey on Monday, September 3. Image Credit: CNN/Zoran Milich

Barack Obama Doodler-In-Chief

This article published in the New York Times is just priceless. If anyone reads this article titled "The Competitor in Chief — Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else" and questions the President as to the factual nature of this article, one may find out that this is a man many people just could not warm up to.

The article opens up with this following paragraph; As Election Day approaches, President Obama is sharing a few important things about himself. He has mentioned more than once in recent weeks that he cooks “a really mean chili.” He has impressive musical pitch, he told an Iowa audience. He is “a surprisingly good pool player,” he informed an interviewer — not to mention (though he does) a doodler of unusual skill.

Where was this article in 2008 during the run up to the last presidential election? Oh yes ... this article was where the actual colleagues, friends, teachers, and grades achieved by Barack Obama during his college years were stored!

This article from Forbes, which analyses the New York Times front page article, serves as great reading while filling time between speakers who stand up and talk at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina over the next three days. If the speakers do not make you realize we have operated under the wrong leadership over these last three and a half years ... this article will.

This excerpted and edited from Forbes -

New York Times Proves Clint Eastwood Correct -- Obama Is Lousy CEO
BY  Rich Karlgaard, Forbes Staff - 9/03/2012 @ 12:34PM

A New York Times front page story today — New York Times! — might have killed President Obama’s re-election hopes.

The story is called “The Competitor in Chief — Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else.” It is devastating.

With such a title, and from such a friendly organ, at first I thought Jodi Kantor’s piece would be a collection of Obama’s greatest political wins: His rapid rise in Illinois, his win over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, the passage of health care, and so on.

But the NYT piece is not about any of that. Rather, it is a deep look into the two outstanding flaws in Obama’s executive leadership:

1. How he vastly overrates his capabilities:

     But even those loyal to Mr. Obama say that his quest for excellence can bleed into cockiness and that he tends to overestimate his capabilities. The cloistered nature of the White House amplifies those tendencies, said Matthew Dowd, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, adding that the same thing happened to his former boss. “There’s a reinforcing quality,” he said, a tendency for presidents to think, I’m the best at this.

2. How he spends extraordinary amounts of time and energy to compete in — trivialities.

    For someone dealing with the world’s weightiest matters, Mr. Obama spends surprising energy perfecting even less consequential pursuits. He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores. He decompresses with card games on Air Force One, but players who do not concentrate risk a reprimand (“You’re not playing, you’re just gambling,” he once told Arun Chaudhary, his former videographer).

    His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.

Kantor’s piece is full of examples of Obama’s odd need to (a) dominate his peers in everything from bowling, cards, golf, basketball, and golf (104 times in his presidency). Bear in mind, Obama doesn’t just robustly compete. The leader of the free world spends many hours practicing these trivial pursuits behind the scenes. Combine this weirdly wasted time with a consistent overestimation of his capabilities, and the result is, according to NYT’s Kantor:

    He may not always be as good at everything as he thinks, including politics. While Mr. Obama has given himself high grades for his tenure in the White House — including a “solid B-plus” for his first year — many voters don’t agree, citing everything from his handling of the economy to his unfulfilled pledge that he would be able to unite Washington to his claim that he would achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.

    Those were not the only times Mr. Obama may have overestimated himself: he has also had a habit of warning new hires that he would be able to do their jobs better than they could.

    “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Though he never ran a large organization before becoming president, he initially dismissed internal concerns about management and ended up with a fictionalized White House and a fuzzier decision-making process than many top aides wanted.

Kantor’s portrait of Obama is stunning. It paints a picture of a CEO who is unfocused and lost.

Imagine, for a minute, that you are on the board of directors of a company. You have a CEO who is not meeting his numbers and who is suffering a declining popularity with his customers. You want to help this CEO recover, but then you learn he doesn’t want your help. He is smarter than you and eager to tell you this. Confidence or misplaced arrogance? You’re not sure at first. If the company was performing well, you’d ignore it. But the company is performing poorly, so you can’t.

With some digging, you learn, to your horror, that the troubled CEO spends a lot of time on — what the hell? — bowling? Golf? Three point shots? While the company is going south?

What do you do? You fire that CEO. Clint Eastwood was right. You let the guy go.
[Reference Here]

With the "Debt Clock" streaming past $16 Billion dollars during the Democratic National Convention, with over 1/3 of this amount added by this Doodler-In-Chief in only four years, some decisions just seem simpler to make, during this Carter's Second Term, than others when the light of truth shines upon them.

Let 'im go.


** Article first published as Barack Obama Doodler-In-Chief on Technorati **

Of Clint Eastwood, Chairs, And A Job Well Done

  

Clint Eastwood speaks to Barack Obama as represented by an empty chair. Image Credit: H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Of Clint Eastwood, Chairs, And A Job Well Done

The presentations at the Republican National Convention (RNC) were strong with a theme that was gifted to the Republicans through an unscripted moment in a campaign speech (are there any other kinds of public address with Barry?) delivered by our 44th President, Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama mocked successful business owners through the phrase brought about when he characterized these business owners as being smarter or gaming the system when they built there businesses and hired people saying “You didn’t build that”, insinuating that businesses would not exist without help from the Government.

The RNC said over, and over again – We Built This!” – and tied the President to his failed record on job creation, the economy, the increase in debt, and with Clint Eastwood’s help, his lack of leadership for all Americans no matter party affiliation, ethnic background, religion, or talent.

Clint Eastwood was a surprise headline evening podium guest and instead of coming on stage with a tightly scripted presentation that included background video, testimonials, and props … save one. All Clint did was talk to the crowd and carried on a conversation with one prop, an empty chair.

The Empty chair, as explained by Clint Eastwood, was to symbolize our current president, Barack Obama.

What a classic metaphor which played on many levels – from this president not being in his chair while playing in one of his record number of golf outings (well over 100 games played since he assumed office), to being MIA (missing in action) on policies that promote as opposed to inhibit job creation and growth, to operating the government without a formal budget since taking office (that’s right, NO BUDGET), an additional 6 Trillion dollars added to our debt (a sum greater than what all other Presidents have added to the debt before Obama), and finally, the concept of “Leading From Behind” in all things relating to foreign affairs (and really, there is much, much more).

“So I’ve got Mr. Obama sitting here and I just was going to ask him a couple of questions. But you know, I remember 3½ years ago when Mr. Obama won the election and, no, I wasn’t a big supporter,” Eastwood said as he looked at the empty stool next to his podium.

“I was watching that night when he was having that thing and they were talking about hope and change,” he added. “‘Yes we can’ and it was dark and outdoors and it was nice, people were lighting candles, they were saying ‘I just thought this is great.’ Everybody’s crying, Oprah was crying. And I was even crying.”
“I haven’t cried that hard since I found out that there’s 23 million unemployed people in this country. Now that is something to cry for because that is a disgrace, a national disgrace, and we haven’t done enough; obviously, this administration hasn’t done enough to cure that,” he said.

The actor, who officially endorsed Romney earlier this month, continued on a winding rant in which he hit the president for failing to keep his many 2008 promises.

“Somebody had the stupid idea of trying terrorists in downtown New York City. … I know you were against the war in Iraq and that’s OK, but you thought the war in Afghanistan was OK. You thought that was something worth doing. We didn’t check with the Russians to see how they did there for the 10 years,” Eastwood said.

“I’m not going to shut up. It’s my turn,” the actor blurted out a few moments later, still glancing over at the make-believe Obama sitting in the empty chair next to him. “I just wondered, all these promises, and then I wondered about you know, … what do you want me to tell Romney? I can’t tell him that. … Tell him yourself. You’re absolutely crazy.”

 

Photo “Tweeted” by Barack H. Obama, himself. Tweet: This seat’s taken. http://OFA.BO/c2gbfi , pic.twitter.com/jgGZTb02 – The fact that this 44th President couldn’t pass the chance to respond speaks volumes.

This back and forth with the empty chair was amusing and, to the Obama faithful, disrespectful. Clint Eastwood understood the depth of this metaphor and I think he knew it would get under the very thin skin of this “Child-King” executive leader who currently occupies the office.

Eastwood went on - "I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important.  It is that, you, we -- we own this country.

We -- we own it.  It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it.  Politicians are employees of ours."

Clint then addressed the crowd in the hall and on the camera with this line – “Whether you are a Democrat or Republican or whether you’re libertarian or whatever, you are the best. And we should not ever forget that. And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.”

Clint Eastwood is right, we, as Americans living during Carter's Second Term, have to let this 44th President and his administration go come November 2012.