Throughout his campaign Obama and his team demonstrated intelligence and skill in political and other public affairs. However, since his election Obama has demonstrated an appalling lack of work ethic. I point to examples below that show that he is not interested, or even willing to, do the work necessary to be president.
First, I will disprove the argument that his rigorous campaign proves definitively that he is a hard worker. 1) If one is interested in looking at his past, we should examine his other political expierence. He never worked hard in the IL state senate or the US senate to pass legislation or do the other jobs of a legislator. Instead, he focused on writing books, giving speeches and making high profile contacts. 2) His campaign wasn’t too rigorous. a) Several weeks before the election, Obama began to make as many mistakes as Biden and most of the news media at the time attributed it to fatigue. b) His counter-part, who is decades his senior, campaigned even harder, making more campaign appearances and traveling farther during the same period, and yet displayed fewer signs of fatigue. 3) The work of campaigning and writing books etc. is entertaining and easy. When doing this type of work, one spends more time getting praised then he does actually doing grinding work. Contrarily, the job of a president is mostly, when done properly, closed door dealings which seem bland to the average public.
Throughout his life, Obama has demonstrated a significant aversion to work if it didn’t result in numerous interviews the next day praising him for his amazing awesomness.
Now, to his short time in office.
First, Obama decides to continue to try to push Geitner, Killefer, and Daschle despite their tax problems. Obama’s camp had to know the implications of such massive problems, and the only reason why they would have pushed so many unsuitable choices is either stupidity or laziness. I favor the latter. The reason is simple. The intellectual work required to run his campaign is more similar to that of the WH then the type of work of running a campaign is to that of a president (see above.)
Then, Obama sends a very brief “outline” (I wouldn’t even call it that) of the stimulus bill to congress when they were expecting him to send them a detailed proposal with all the major and contentious points filled in.
After that, he doesn’t take the time to get a clear message, causing Cooper to say that the WH has been supporting his opposition to the stimulus. Related to that, Gibbs has not taken a stance on almost any of the key issues in the bill, saying that is the job of the legislature. On a final similar note, rather then sitting down and grinding out a bill with congressional leaders, he brought “different supportive groups to the White House, scheduling a series of TV interviews, even traveling to a charter school to tout one portion of the bill.”
While Obama has jumped to sign executive orders written by other people (he doesn’t even know what is in them) so that he can hold a press conference, he has demonstrated an amazing amount of outright laziness as relates to any type of presidential activity that requires that he actually does work.
Moe Lane
Dan McLaughlin
Dan Spencer
Jeff Emanuel
Neil Stevens
