Was watching last night while live tweeting - Thought Obama did an excellent presentation. Loved the New York Times' Jeff Zeleny's question: Obama's reaction when writing down 'enchanted' was dead priceless. But here's the thing: the one question that seemed frothy and light, was where I kind of freaked out a bit..
Thought the surprise answer was a spectacular fail. BO claimed surprise (35:10) at the number of critical issues that weren't apparent 18 months ago, particularly the financial crisis. What rubbish: the Bear Stearns fund bailout debacle kicked off in June 2007, ultimately culminating in its Federal Reserve-brokered sale to JP Morgan Chase in March 2008 - with Lehman Brothers close on its heels. This was well before the presidential campaigns kicked off, all the candidates should've had a handle on this, and yes I do believe they should have seen this current crisis coming, especially a former candidate who was embraced quite warmly by the financial industry the way BO was.
While I think it's too early to judge the Administration, Obama's condescension towards partisanship and the politics of the Beltway seems petulant and beneath a sitting POTUS - especially coming from a former US Senator. That quirk only underscores how little his Senate career prepared him for his current role. It can't all be Bush's fault (were that it could...) or the fault of politics.
Makes me think of Ellis Cose's brilliant article, "12 Things", where he lists 12 rules of thumb on thriving in America. Number 9 talks about hard work, intelligence, competence not always being enough to get you the results you want.
"...the general rule is that any organization (government, private business, educational or other) is essentially a social body that rewards those fully engaged in the game. To the extent we try to hold ourselves above that process, we end up losing..."
Obama would do well to commit that to memory. Or at least to his BlackBerry.
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