when past behavior is a better predictor than hope

S B Lewis
Essex, New York


Our president came to office without military experience, without executive experience, without business experience, without any of the experience needed for his office. His primary and extraordinary accomplishment came in achieving his office in a nation wracked with racial issues since its founding. Barack Obama won. Our problems were over. Hope over skepticism.

We are learning again how important experience is. Experience is the great teacher. And the man has none.

Nothing in President Obama's past, absolutely nothing, qualifies him to make the decisions he has had to make - and he has made a number of them in such a way as to lose the congressional balance so critical to making them without rancor.

We are now asked to believe that changing the entire management team at defense and at each of the armed services is a plus for the nation - when the man leading that change has never served a day, and his policy in Iraq and in Afghanistan is essentially a bust.

Remember: Iraq was the bad war, Afghanistan was the good war. What war is good? The man has never fired a 22 rifle. He has never been drafted. Would he have dodged the draft as Clinton did?

Dwight David Eisenhower said a few things on point - and was a 5-star general with a record in management: he ran SHAPE, Columbia University, D-Day, Allied forces in WW 2.

First, beware the military industrial complex. Toss in the medical industrial complex, another place where our president has stubbed his toe and created a building disaster. Between the military and the medical, The United States is bankrupt.

Second, Ike warned us against war where the supply chain or distance was on the other side of the planet. So, JFK and LBJ ignored IKE, and buried the nation in its first defeat in war. JFK remains a hero. This is rubbish.

Dwight David Eisenhower ran the last administration where the U S government long bond traded at 2 5/8th yield to maturity, as set by market forces. IKE was furious with a $7 billion deficit - and put an end to it.

JFK, son of an unprosecuted criminal of incredible wealth - ended the balanced budget, started a war in Cuba, ramped the war in Vietnam - accomplished nothing in his senate career, and was little but trouble in his time in The White House. It's been straight downhill ever since. LBJ took the wreck of JFK's presidency and build on the Kennedy legacy of failure and gave us Guns and Butter - and lost his office in disgrace.

Strangely, JFK's seduction of the nation and the press - plus his assassination and his disastrous marriage - attracted a romantic support that could not have been less healthy for our nation or our children. Jack was the opposite of Nixon. He was Catholic. He was young, supposedly honest. Son of a bootlegger, from a family of the addicted, their history has played out... since.

Now, this president, from a family of no balance - with a history that offers nothing to give confidence - is running things at a time when the nation has rejected his judgement and tossed 560 members of his party from office - and The New York Times offers reasons why those tossed should be considered in the upcoming effort to staff the largest part of the nation's government, and the most important part of our nation's defense profile - second only to our ability to pay for it.

The 'reforms' brought by this administration to Wall Street are pathetic. There is not a word about market structure - nor has a single important person in the debt crisis stepped forward to say what he did. None have been prosecuted.

The management of the defense department and the armed services is vital stuff.

How can the nation have confidence that the messed up senate, the confused White House - and the military industrial complex will do any better than the medical industrial complex has managed to do with the nation's scandal in health care?

Is there one intelligent person who can explain why medical costs rise - and rise - and rise - and the government and 3rd party pay drive that cost - and all we can do is put more and more government and more and more insurance to the task of lowering that cost? Medical and military cost so much because government drives that cost. It's that simple.

And we are at war, in two losing battles, because these complexes want that war, and congress does what money wants it to do.

This president lacks what it takes to run his office - and he lacks what it takes to confront the run away congress.

Who in Washington has the public's trust? Name one person, any person.

2011 and 2012 are going to make 2006 - 2010 look easy.

The people cannot fix this at the ballot box. And there is no sense conveyed in Washington can do it. Where is the talent?

The parties would rather fight about it - and position themselves for 2012 and beyond.

This is a disaster - happening, right before our eyes.

And there is no sense in Washington that any of them want to fix it - or can.