The difference between being a leader and a follower
The oil spill and its aftermath bring out the best and worst of people. On the worst side, there is the President who said just before BP was about to cap the well and trying to take the glory for himself by saying he is responsible and the buck stops with him. Yeah and pigs fly!
He has never managed anything nor been in charge of any group of people and it shows. His lack of leadership is embarrassing to me, the people of the United States and the World.
He never seems to make a decision. He spent his entire term in the ILLINOIS congress voting: ‘Present’. Never a YES or a NO. As a US Senator, his record is about the same.
Now as President, he pushed for a health care bill using the Chicago way – The home of Al Capone and The BOSS. That’s where he learned politics. Anyone not willing to vote his way was put under intense pressure. Maybe that is not strong enough. How would you like to be in an gym’s shower room showering and have someone intensely swear at you to change your vote or you will never get anything for your district passed and they will work with the opposition to make sure you are not re-elected? That would make me angry. But some people had more savvy and requested that their district or state receive tens of millions of dollars for their vote. They knew how to work the Chicago way. And they received the “bribe”.
Only trouble is that the “bribe’ money (OK some will want to say that it was encouragement money) but the money had to come from somewhere. Where do you think the money came from? It came from you and me - from the stimulus money. That’s why there has been no new jobs created with $787,000,000,000 dollars of stimulus money.
So the politicians have learned to bribe the congress people with our own money. That’s one of the Chicago’s ways. So we have a President pushing for a bill that every poll suggested that 55% to 75% did not want. Was he a leader in this instance? No Way! He was just a stubborn man trying to get what he wanted no matter how it hurt the United States and it will hurt the United States in a terrible way now that the “real truth” of the cost of the health care bill is out.
There was no leadership here – Just Bribing.
As for leadership, you see it in the Governor of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
And you see it in the hundreds of vacationers who on their vacation are scooping up tar balls from the oil spill. You see it in the people who collected hundreds and hundreds of birds and turtles still covered with tar. They are cleaning these birds and turtles to save the environment as best as they can. And the People who roped barges together to stop the flow of oil into the wetlands. Even with Kevin Kostner with his great oil/water separator.
Leadership has its own quality. People stepping up to take charge. People forcing the government to accept doing something to at least get a “handle’ on the spilled oil and accept the equipment offered to the US to help in the clean-up. It took the President 50 days before he acted. It took people to save the birds and turtles one day to act. The difference is being able to take real responsibility in tough times and not use it for political advantage.
So many individual acts of responsibility – all need to be praised versus a President without a clue who is using this oil spill to help pass a law that will cost the American people jobs and costs all Americans more just to live in exchange for what? An empty promise?. This President should begin thinking about stepping down and letting a real leader handle the job of the Presidency. He must know it in his heart by now that he is in way over his head.
And that’s the way I see it…
Jay Clifford
JayClifford@att.net
