Stephanie
Diamond Member
- Jul 11, 2004
- 70,230
- 10,864
- 2,040
and at the end of this speech he should sign off by saying, I RESIGN.
SNIP:
My fellow Americans: Events of the past 55 days have taught me some valuable lessons about leadership and I'd like to share those with you tonight.
When the Deepwater Horizons rig blew up and spawned a terrible oil spill on April 22, my administration's response was conditioned by decades of liberal and leftist thinking about business and government. My background in academia and community activism had never exposed me to the basics of making business decisions or to the fundamentals of a market economy. To the contrary, my friends on the left and I tended to see businessmen, doctors, bankers -- pretty much anyone who made a profit -- as selfish creeps. "There comes a point when you've made enough money" I scolded, when urging passage of a financial reform bill.
So when the oil spill became a national story, our instinct was to bash the company. "I am angry and frustrated that BP has been unable to stop the leak," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar complained. "We're 33 days in ... and deadline after deadline has been missed." Salazar seemed to believe that BP, which was losing millions of dollars a day, had lost half its market capitalization since April, and was potentially facing ruin if the spill could not be contained, somehow lacked a sense of urgency. "We're keeping our boot on the neck of BP," Salazar assured members of Congress.
Going beyond rhetorical overkill, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department had opened a criminal probe into the oil spill -- though without offering a shred of evidence that any laws had been broken.
I piled on, offering that I would have fired Tony Hayward if he had been working for me, and allowing as how I was studying whose derriere to kick. And this leads me to the other problem with our approach.
Because my party and I have a quasi-religious belief in the power of government, I rushed to position myself as the responsible party in this crisis. "I'm the president and the buck stops with me," I intoned. "It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down" ... "I ultimately take responsibility for solving this crisis."
read it all and comments here.
Mona Charen : What Obama Should Say Tuesday Night - Townhall.com
SNIP:
My fellow Americans: Events of the past 55 days have taught me some valuable lessons about leadership and I'd like to share those with you tonight.
When the Deepwater Horizons rig blew up and spawned a terrible oil spill on April 22, my administration's response was conditioned by decades of liberal and leftist thinking about business and government. My background in academia and community activism had never exposed me to the basics of making business decisions or to the fundamentals of a market economy. To the contrary, my friends on the left and I tended to see businessmen, doctors, bankers -- pretty much anyone who made a profit -- as selfish creeps. "There comes a point when you've made enough money" I scolded, when urging passage of a financial reform bill.
So when the oil spill became a national story, our instinct was to bash the company. "I am angry and frustrated that BP has been unable to stop the leak," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar complained. "We're 33 days in ... and deadline after deadline has been missed." Salazar seemed to believe that BP, which was losing millions of dollars a day, had lost half its market capitalization since April, and was potentially facing ruin if the spill could not be contained, somehow lacked a sense of urgency. "We're keeping our boot on the neck of BP," Salazar assured members of Congress.
Going beyond rhetorical overkill, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department had opened a criminal probe into the oil spill -- though without offering a shred of evidence that any laws had been broken.
I piled on, offering that I would have fired Tony Hayward if he had been working for me, and allowing as how I was studying whose derriere to kick. And this leads me to the other problem with our approach.
Because my party and I have a quasi-religious belief in the power of government, I rushed to position myself as the responsible party in this crisis. "I'm the president and the buck stops with me," I intoned. "It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down" ... "I ultimately take responsibility for solving this crisis."
read it all and comments here.
Mona Charen : What Obama Should Say Tuesday Night - Townhall.com
