Empty Cabinet

There is a very distressing undertone that has emerged from revelations surrounding the three scandals that are currently percolating in the Obama administration … the Benghazi scandal, the IRS profiling scandal, and the Associated Press wiretapping scandal.  It seems that, in all three instances, President Obama is a bystander to these events.  He either is seen handing things off to subordinates and then disappearing into the shadows … or he first reads about these scandals in the national media.  Distressing … Does he not have a process in place where these things are brought forward for his management attention?  And then attended to before they hit the national media?

I recently heard a Pontius Pilate analogy used for our President … in that he always has that basin of water handy with which he can wash his hands of any responsibility.  President Truman famously said, “The buck stops here.”  President Obama seems to say, “The buck stops I know not where.”  The upcoming implementation of Obamacare has been described as a train wreck.  Does this not concern our President?  Is he holding cabinet meetings to try to avert this disaster?  Or is he shooting hoops … or playing golf … or holding a fund raiser … or planning his next vacation?  Is he just another empty suit?

I recognize that Obama has been often criticized for his lack of leadership skills (much more so of late).  And it is not that he doesn’t have a plethora of advisers and Czars.  But his handling (or lack thereof) of these recent scandals leads me to concur that he is sorely lacking in critical management skills.  When was the last time he held a cabinet meeting?  Or held a meeting of any type that was not a photo op … or which resulted in anything substantive or beneficial for our country’s governance?  President Andrew Jackson had his Kitchen Cabinet.  President Obama has his Empty Cabinet.

Afterward:  And that Chicago thug and Obama consigliere, David Axelrod, has an explanation for President Obama's management incompetence ... see: National Review Story.

After Afterward: Even Chris Mathews agrees with me ... see: Politico Story

Being Deferential

In the southern United States, whenever a funeral procession nears, all the cars on both sides of the road, pull over in respect to let the it pass. This type of behavior is archetypically deferential. May I suggest that this seems to be the type of treatment that Barack Obama has experienced most of his adult life. People have been deferential to him at college, in his community-organizer life, during his stints in state and national legislatures, throughout his campaign for President, and even now as POTUS.  He has respectfully been given the benefit of the doubt by the public and the media … very likely because of his race, certainly because of his oratorical skills, possibly due to his attractive family, and, to summarize, as Joe Biden bluntly said it, he is “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Now things are beginning to unravel for our ass-kicker-in-chief (see: Ass Kicking). He seems to be unable to demonstrate his management skills to the degree that voters expected when they overwhelming elected him about twenty months ago. I have previously detailed his numerous crisis management failings in another of my blogs: Crisis Management. But, herein I want to briefly explore why he may be so inept administratively. To me, all indications point to the fact that his preparation for the Presidency has been sadly bereft of management experience and successes.

When he was the head of the Law Review at Harvard, he never had to express his own legal adroitness in writing … as was customary for such a position. The fact that his academic records in college have been sealed suggests that there are also some damaging personality failings therein. College professors (rather “senior lecturers” as was the case for Obama) are notoriously unable to manage their associates and departments. (This is why former college professors often make lousy college presidents.) And community organizers seldom have to deal with serious management crises. And lastly, continuously voting “present” in his legislative career suggests that Obama too frequently opted to hide under his desk rather than face difficult governance issues.

Yes, Obama did successfully run (with the help of the Chicago political machine) a stellar campaign for President in 2008. But again, I suspect that he let the wave of deferential media enthusiasm carry him into office rather than having to fight hammer-and-tongs through an even-up political battle. One gets the distinct impression that, now that the exigencies of running the most powerful nation in the world have imposed themselves on his previously unflappable universe, he is in way over his head. His early apology tour of the world, in which he seemed to want to curry favor … particularly with many of our adversaries ... by proudly fouling his own nest … has bought him only a fistful of guano dust. Nowhere has this humble-pie foreign-policy reset solved any of the United States's stickier diplomatic issues. One may argue that he has made most of them far worse. He has kept his own counsel all too frequently and now can only point at others instead of confessing to his own bad advice.

The only hope for us as a nation is that Obama is a quick-study and can mid-course correct while on the job. If not, we will likely suffer some very painful two and a half more years of “hope and change.”