It seems that Jack Cafferty over at CNN isn’t quite able to tell the difference between movement and action. In the sense that Obama clearly appears to be in motion far more than Bush ever was I can agree with Cafferty; after all, Bush seemed to favor the appearance of a “hands-off” president while Obama is obviously committed to being conspicuously involved with the country’s day-to-day operations in addition to his strategic visions. Unfortunately, I cannot agree with Cafferty’s conclusion:
President Obama is attacking our country’s problems on several fronts. He’s got ambitious ideas on how to solve them, and he communicates a sense of calm and confidence to the rest of us as he goes about his business. Will all his ideas work? Of course not. But if you throw enough stuff at the wall, some of it will stick.
Really? You’re willing to stake the future of this country on the theory that “some of it will stick”? I pay my bills by being a consultant. If I operated on Cafferty’s theory I wouldn’t last even a month. I don’t get to walk into a meeting with a client and suggest that we just try several different methods and hope that we hit on the right process reasonably soon. I don’t get to have “ambitious ideas” that may not be translatable into feasible actions. No, I don’t have those luxuries. I am expected to analyze the situation, understand what is happening, and make decisive recommendations that are not only strategically and tactically sound, but also logistically-achievable.
Now, by no means do I intend to imply that I never make mistakes. Nor do I intend to imply that mistakes on Obama’s part are somehow unacceptable. He is as human as anyone else and it’s irrational to expect that he will please everyone (or even make the correct decisions) all the time. But Cafferty’s commentary is empty praise; he does not offer specific accomplishments or solid examples on which to base his praise. Rather, he relies upon the vague assumption that appearing busy is interchangeable with achieving results.
None of this is to claim that Obama has been ineffective. We simply do not have enough information to evaluate such things at this point. It is far too early for anything Obama has done or advocated to be showing results. At best, we will begin to see results in two to four years and it’s possible that we will not truly know the effects of our president’s decisions for decades. There are, of course, some novice mis-steps that Cafferty, to his credit, admits and even correctly evaluates as substantial missed opportunities. Yet, even I, a person with strong ideological differences from Obama, admit that these mis-steps are ultimately unlikely to be particularly damning in the long run.
No, Cafferty’s praise of Obama is not objectionable per se. Rather, what is objectionable is the implication that motion is synonymous with action and that there is somehow merit to the idea of simply trying anything and everything on the premise that one will eventually get lucky and find something that works. The operating principle that even a blind pig will find a truffle every once in a while is something that I wouldn’t trust in my mechanic, much less my President.