Back in June, Senator Obama said this and we made fun of it (twice) because of the statement’s absurdity and grandiosity. Note the strangeness and inappropriateness of the phrase “absolutely certain”:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…

What a load of malarkey (BTW, remember we are the ones we’ve been waiting for?). You have to have fallen off the turnip truck pretty recently to go for such nonsense. However, that was a campaign. To be a candidate is one thing. To be the President and CEO of the American government is another. A CEO has to watch his words. That message apparently hasn’t gotten to the White House yet. In his Saturday address, the President served up some of the same hyperbole we’ve previously criticized:

Yesterday began with some devastating news with regard to our economic crisis…we received yet another round of alarming employment figures – the worst in more than 30 years. Another 600,000 jobs were lost in January…if we don’t move swiftly to put this plan in motion, our economic crisis could become a national catastrophe…

There are perhaps occasions for a President to use the words “devastating” and “catastrophe” to describe events in America. Pushing for a particular bill in Congress is not an appropriate occasion. A CEO ought to be restrained in the use of hyperbole because his actions and words have to roughly correlate with each other. What words will Obama have left over if and when a real catastrophe or devastating event occurs?

Thus we return to a question that no one seems to know the answer to. Does Obama really believe his exaggerated rhetoric? If the answer is yes, the implications are deeply disturbing.

Commentators have mixed views of the President’s current performance. Michael Barone notes a “coolness and sense of command” in the President’s media interviews. Maureen Dowd sees Obama as “snow-blinded”, and notes an odd comment by the President about not wanting to be “mediocre.” Mark Steyn says Obama appears to be “all at sea.” If we had to guess at this point, we think that the latter assessments are probably correct.

It is a very hard thing to be an effective CEO, or even a “mediocre” CEO. It’s not something you learn to do overnight (though some, like Harry Truman, have learned pretty fast). President Obama has no executive experience. It would be an indication that he is learning on the job if he starts cutting back on his hyperbolic rhetoric. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long four years.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 5:51 am and is filed under business, Democrats, General, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.