Arrogance over Protocol

The recent gatecrashers at the White House bring to mind what happens when a new administration comes into office. Understandably, they are pumped up over their recent win and now want to put their own mark on the country. Unfortunately new administrations also have the tendency to walk over the rank and file and don't listen to the real people who run the departments regardless of who is president. The new presidents tell the old-timers that they don't want to hear the excuse of "that's how we always did it" and now want things done their way. However, the new administration has neither the experience nor the patience to listen to the very peope who could help them. In their arrogance at being elected Presidents don't understand that the intricate protocol that has been perfected over the past 100 years enables new presidents to fulfill their new duties with poise and class and avoid potentially embarrassing mistakes. I have a sneaking suspician that this is at the heart of the lapse in security at the Obama's first state dinner.


If I remember correctly, there were horror stories about the last two Democratic administratons. Both the Clinton and the Carter incoming teams were young, inexperienced and few on their team had much managerial skills or spent any time in DC. Yet these young politicians came across as arrogant, cocky, power hungry and charged with the belief that they were empowered to do whatever they felt was best for the country. There were rumors that the Clintons sold overnight stays at the White House to major donors or their Hollwood friends. Then there was Bill Clinton's conduct in the White House with that woman which showed a complete lack of respect for the office of the President and for the White House, itself. Carter wasn't much better as he invited his adolescent daughter to a formal state function where she then proceded to read a book at the dinner table.

In contrast to the disastors created by Carter and Clinton's administrations, both of the Bush's had very smooth transitions. Yes, George HW Bush went from VP to President, retaining a number of people from Reagan's regime. But Bush himself was a career politician who knew the ins and out of Washington. Ford was another old time politician who stepped into the void left by one of the country's most traumatic experiences. Yet Ford was still able to assure the country and the world that the US would continue intact. But this kind of transition isn't always that smooth, as both LBJ and Truman had very rocky transitions from VP to President.


Clinton's administration not only began disastrously but it ended equally shamefully with stories of trashed offices and destroyed computers. But, like his father, George W. Bush had class and never complained about the mess left by the Clintons. And unlike the Clintons and Carters, Bush had a team that included career politicians who understood DC, which helped his team have an easier transition than if they were all newcomers.


Now we have Obama who has even less experience than Carter and Clinton, who had both been governors. To his credit, Obama did keep a few men from Bush's administration. This was particularly helpful in providing a smooth transition to our military, although, ironically, this caused Obama a lot of grief with the very liberal base who elected him.


In spite of the media's shunning of any negative story about the Obama administration, more and more cracks are starting to appear. People are beginning to question if mistakes are being made due to Obama's ignorance and inexperience or perhaps due to his determination to do things his way or to a combination of all of the above.


There are Obama's continuing bows to other state leaders when rarely if never has a President bowed that low for it is seen as a symbol of weakness. At times Obama comes across as too parochial. He had a favorite during the World Series, he of course cheered on the Chicago basketball team and he somehow found the time to travel overseas to help promote his hometown in its failed bid for the Olympics. On the other hand, he snubbed all of the activities regarding World War II.


Speaking of traveling, he really shouldn't be proud of the fact that he has traveled more than any other president in the first year. Someone with more experience, who truly understands his role as President, which isn't to go sightseeing with his wife and kids, belongs first and foremost at home. This is especially true when the country is hurting as much as the US is with the high unemployment, horrible housing markt and in the middle of a major recession.


And now we have a couple breaking through what should be extreme security to crash the Obama's first state dinner. (I also can't help but wonder why it took them 10 months before they had their first major official event.) I am sure that the Secret Security will take a major hit for this breach in security. Yet there are faint hints that the Obamas have tried to relax some of the security surrounding the White House and themselves. Perhaps once again a young inexperienced first couple is bulldozing over the rank and file so that they can do things their way. They might not realize that there is a reason behind the established protocol. Both of the Obamas need to stop talking so much and to start listening to the old-timers around them. Their very lives might depend upon it.

Tenaciously Optimistic

I heard a phrase the other day which immediately resonated in me. I don’t remember where I heard it but the phrase was “tenaciously optimistic”. Isn’t that great? We all know people who never seem happy; who complain about every little thing that happens to them. On the other hand, there are those few people who truly have had terrible adversities in their life and yet they still seem happy. They are tenaciously optimistic. They know that when life throws you a curve ball it would be easy to feel sorry for yourself or become bitter but instead they work to remain hopeful and cling to their belief that life is to be enjoyed. I should know. I also think that this phrase describes the attitudes of our best politicians and leaders, not just here but world wide.

Think of Winston Churchill who never gave up during WWII. One of his many quotes that he is famous for is: ... we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. Wow. Now that is the epitome of being tenaciously optimistic! Churchill had faith that they would win but he knew they would have to work hard to achieve that win; in other words they needed to be tenaciously optimistic.

Our most revered Presidents are also those who were tenaciously optimistic. Roosevelt inspired Americans with his upbeat view during the Great Depression and then WWII. In fact, Roosevelt applied this sentiment in his personal life. He could have been bitter after being struck by polio and losing the ability to walk. Instead he fought to be happy. So did Kennedy who also had serious illnesses and a debilitating back problem. Like Roosevelt, he overcame his personal problems with humor and confidence that he could do anything.

Perhaps the President who most exemplified tenacious optimism was President Reagan. He was elected during a terrible recession, interest rates greater than 20%, unemployment well over 10% and an energy crisis. Yet during his campaign he exuded optimism and hope that things would be better. And the American people responded and swept him into office twice. How could you not admire a man who as he was being wheeled into surgery after being shot during an assassination attempt quipped to his wife “Honey, I forgot to duck.” Reagan knew that humor is frequently used as a means to deflect adversities.

Obama was also tenaciously optimistic. He would have to be as he was the first African American to be on the Democratic ticket for President. Few African Americans ever thought there would be a black president in their lifetime but not Obama. He even turned his tenacious optimism into his campaign slogan “Yes We Can”. And he did.

I mention this because I heard someone, I think it was the Republican House Minority Whip, say that the two Republicans who just became governors of Virginia and NJ were “sunny Republicans”. The pundits discussed how these two Republicans each ran a campaign of hope and ideas of how to improve life for the citizens of their state. On the other hand, the Democratic candidates ran angrier campaigns attacking their opponent and playing the blame game. Voters have shown over and over that they don’t respond to those kinds of campaigns. We don’t want leaders to blame other people, we want them to explain how they will improve the situation. And once again voters responded to the tenacious optimism of the Republican candidates of Virginia and New Jersey.

Something else has occurred to me. As previously mentioned, when running for President, Obama was enthusiastically hopeful with his “Yes We Can” motto. But since becoming President he seems to have lost that ebullience and hopefulness. Instead every time he gives a speech it is about doom and gloom, how bad things are and continuously blaming President Bush for all the problems. In looking back, Clinton had a lot of problems but if not exactly cheerful, he did have this cocky self assurance. Carter, however, was like an old time Southern Baptist pastor preaching of fire and brimstone unless people changed. He lasted one painful term and yet never learned for he is still preaching doom and gloom.

All the pundits are analyzing the election results from last night. What does it portend for Obama and his agenda? How will it affect the health care bill? What does it mean for the Republican party? Personally, I think the message is an old one. That voters are tired of being told how awful life is, they know that things are tough all over. They don’t need politicians telling them how bad it is or blaming the other party and voters definitely don’t want politicians telling them that they need to sacrifice (ie. pay higher taxes) in order to help others. And they also respond badly to threats – that if they don’t do something then life will be horrible in the future (think climate change).

Voters want those “sunny Republicans”. They want to hear that life is good and is only going to get better. They want solutions but not solutions that makes life tougher for themselves. They want leaders who are confident and hopeful in a better future. Leaders who won’t promise easy fixes since most of the time the voters end up paying for that. Instead these leaders will tell you how they will work to improve your family’s life. These leaders are tenaciously optimistic; finding joy and pride in America even during the darkest hours and exuding hopefulness that we can work together to create a shining future.

Let's Do Lunch

Wouldn’t you just love to be in the White House today? Our four living presidents: Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George Bush, and President elect Barack Obama are meeting today for a luncheon at the White House. How fascinating will that be?

The dynamics between our past, current and future Presidents would be very interesting to watch. Obviously the father and son Bush’s get along, or you would suppose they would. A few years ago Bush 43 tapped Bill Clinton to work closely with Bush 41 and apparently they all became friends in spite of their political differences. And as the new kid on the block I assume that everyone wants to talk to Obama or give him advice and he should be listening to the experiences of his predecessors. So that leaves Jimmy Carter. Neither of the Bush’s have reason to like him nor could I see Carter and Clinton having much in common other than being the two past Democrat Presidents. Besides, Jimmy should be feeling a bit embarrassed again about that Nobel Peace Prize for the Middle East and his Habitat for Humanity houses falling apart.

I sure would like to be a fly on the wall to listen in to these men who are in the most exclusive club in the world; United States Presidents. Then again, instead of discussing current events they could simply be telling Obama about hidden rooms in the White House or comparing golf tips. (Isn’t it interesting that all last year the MSM touted Obama as being a basketball player, a very hip urban sport, but waited until after he was elected to mention that he was also an avid golfer, a country club sport associated with Republicans!)

Anyway, I wonder how many other countries could have all of their past living leaders meet with the upcoming leader without bloodshed? In spite of everything that is wrong with this country we still must be doing something right!

No Habitat for Humanity

There are so many big news stories on TV and the internet; the fighting on the Gaza Strip, the upcoming inauguration, Bill Richardson stepping down as Obama’s choice for Secretary of Commerce, the mess in Illinois and if the senate will seat Burris, the sickening prospect that Al Franken just might be the next Senator from MN and I can go on and on. But I have decided to kick off the New Year with a smaller story that you probably haven’t heard about.

The Drudge Report has a link to a very politically incorrect headline which caught my attention: “Charity homes built by Jimmy Carter start to crumble”. As in everything that Carter has done, he means well but it somehow is always the wrong thing to do in the long run. (Remember that this is the same man who won a Nobel Peace Prize for the Middle East – and see how well that has turned out?!) And it now appears that his Habitat for Humanity may be heading for disaster, too.

Carter and a contingency of volunteers built an entire community of homes in northern Florida eight years ago. Today there is a lawsuit representing many of the 85 homeowners who are now claiming that their homes were built on a rubbish dump. The Timesonline article goes on to say “One man pulled up his floorboards to find rubbish 5ft deep under his kitchen. Other complaints include cracking walls and rotting door frames that let in rats and ants. Many residents have complained of mildew and mysterious skin rashes”.

It shouldn’t really be a big surprise that there are problems with these homes, considering how quickly they were built. Added to this is the, lets say, “inexperience” of the new homeowners. So it is almost to be expected that between the hasty constructions of the homes within a few days then followed by years of less than optimum care that these homes are in disrepair. The same problems are also occurring with the homes built for that TV show, Extreme Makeover. Plus I wouldn’t be surprised if half the folks after the first year can’t even afford to pay the taxes on their expensive new homes, much less the utilities and other monthly bills.

But no one ever hears what happens to these homes and homeowners after the cameras are turned off and the celebrities leave. As I said in the beginning, criticizing Jimmy Carter or even Ty Pennington from Extreme Makeover is one of the biggest politically incorrect statements you could make. The liberals love this kind of charity for it shows that they are helping the little people and it makes them feel good about themselves. They just don’t seem to understand that it would be kinder in the long run to pay for people to go to college or a trade school so that they can eventually afford to buy their own houses, or at the very least to spend time teaching them how to care for their families and new homes.

So now it seems as if some of the houses are falling down partly due to shoddy quick work combined with the fact that some of these new homeowners neglect the upkeep of their homes. Yet no one ever does a follow up to point this out. I guess that would be too much reality for the liberals in New York and LA who live in their insulated world.

Unfortunately I think we are in for a lot more of this kind of thinking. It is a lot easier to shove money at a problem then it is to figure out the cause of the problem and fix that. Democrat governors are requesting $1 trillion in bailout money to cover state shortfalls. Congress has already handed out a $700 billion bank bailout. And now Obama is pushing a massive new $700+ billion “stimulus package”.

Where is all this money going to come from? And how exactly will it be spent? Once again, nobody really knows. In a way the story of these Habitat for Humanity homes is a reflection of what is happening throughout our government. Washington and Hollywood stand hand in hand and make a lot of noise about helping the “little people”. So they will take billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money to build shaky structures, which only help a chosen few, and then eventually it all falls apart through neglect, greed and ill usage while they somehow end up making millions from it. Sound about right? And with the incoming Congress it will only get worse. But don’t get me started on that….

Carter, Clinton and Liberal Congress to Blame

When the financial problems surfaced my first reaction was to place a big portion of the blame on Jimmy Carter and the liberal Congress who passed the first CRA law. I then read an article that explained why I was wrong and silly me, I believed it. Since then I have read too many other reports that indicate that my initial gut response was, in fact, right. CRA is to blame for a big part of the housing and mortgage problem.

What is CRA? During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, Congress created the Community Reinvestment Act to ensure that banks met the credit needs of lower income areas. I was in banking then and remember when a close friend of mine was initially put in charge of implementing the CRA requirements for my bank. I even helped her with the demographics and maps outlining where the low income areas were and showing the number and types of loans we had in those areas.

Within a year we needed to have an entire department full of people, including a lawyer, to not just make these loans but to show the government that we were in compliance with the new laws. This is because we soon realized that this law had teeth. If a bank was found to be out of compliance then the government could stop it from opening branches, merging with other banks, or even give then a Cease and Desist order! I worked for a large bank which had the manpower and expertise to not only meet the new laws but to then prove we did meet them. But for smaller banks, both making the loans and the accompanying CRA paperwork was (and still is) a huge burden.

I am assuming this but it would make sense that over the next 10-15 years the banks found and made loans to the “best” consumers and businessess in low income areas. Yet they still had to show growth and continuous new lending but there was no one left who qualified.

In 1995, when Clinton was president, there was a revision to the CRA and one of the changes was to allow the securitization of new CRA loans with subprime mortgages. I have heard but have not yet been able to prove that these changes also allowed banks to use unemployment checks as income for applying for a loan. Regardless of the exact method, the result was to offer mortgages to people who would not qualify for a loan if they lived in my neighborhood or your neighborhood. Yet they were now moving down the street and raising the prices of our houses, all thanks to CRA. And gee, guess what one of the roles of a community organizer is?

Basically, CRA is affirmative action imposed on banks. But, affirmative action to lower the requirements to get into college is one thing, lowering the requirements to make a loan is an entirely different prospect. If a person flunks out of college, no harm is done but if a person can no longer pay their mortgage, well, we now see what happens. Then again, what else should we expect when liberal congressmen, most of whom have never worked in the real world their entire lives, tell businessmen how to do business?

I hate being right. But my gut instinct to blame CRA is correct. And yet, even as I write this, banks are still being examined to see if they are compliant to CRA regulations. This makes no sense. We must reign in the CRA requirements or else we will find ourselves back in the same mess, regardless of any new proposals by Congress to resolve this issue. As the saying goes, it would simply be throwing good money after bad.

Hillary Clinton - A Perfect Storm

After watching Hillary Clinton I can't help but conclude that she embodies the traits of two of the worst presidents in modern history: Nixon and Carter.

Secrecy, playing the blame game and creating hate lists were major components to Richard Nixon's downfall. It might surprise many that these same traits are also major components to Hillary's personality. One of the many reasons why her health care program tanked was due to her unwillingness to have open meetings and discuss her plan with Washington old timers who had more experience than she did and could have helped draft a compromise plan. Instead meetings were held in secrecy and anyone who blocked her were added to her hate list.


She still operates in the same way today. No one believes that her campaign staff makes a single step without her approval and yet she ruthlessly tosses aside loyal staffers rather than admit any of the recent missteps might have been her fault. Hillary, like Nixon, also tracks her "enemies" in hate lists and holds grudges for a long time. Her "enemies" are numerous ranging from the "right wing conspirators" to anyone who gets in her way of what she believes is her destiny to become the next president. A key to her true personality was her sarcastic laughing at Obama during the last democratic debate. That laugh makes one think that she delights in watching the downfall of anyone who stands in her way.


Religion is playing a major role in the Republican race but is ignored in the Democratic race (except for the shots at Obama about his Muslim relatives by Clinton's staff). Yet after reading a number of articles and the illuminating biography by Carl Bernstein you realize that Hillary approaches religion the same way Jimmy Carter did. Both can be termed "Christian activists" who strongly believe that God is with them and He wants them to help the poor and disadvantage. To their credit, both Clinton and Carter truly believe that their religion demands that they take action. But that makes them scarier since they feel that they are doing God's work and are blind to how their actions might hurt others. Again, Hillary's many plans are focused on the poor with absolutely no regard to how it would negatively affect the middle class.


Hillary Clinton is truly "a perfect storm" encompassing the worst traits of Nixon and Carter. This country barely survived the secrecy, hate lists and blame games of Nixon and the religious righteousness of Carter. And now we have Hillary who's personality is a lethal combination of these destructive traits plus toss in her husband, who is a walking time bomb himself, and this country might not survive four years of Hillary.