There is a headline article in our local newspaper this morning about the Obama administration's response to and dealing with the BP oil spill last spring and into the summer.

While the world as we know it didn't end, as predicted by some who are always fearing that the sky will fall, the spill did do tremendous economic damage to that region of the country.

A special Whitehouse investigative commission has concluded that the administration failed miserably in dealing with it, especially during the early weeks.  The author of the committee's report likend the response to Custer's last stand - horribly underestimating what they were were dealing with.

To me, this comes from the people at the top, and their total lack of experience in engineering, business, disaster response, and dealing with grave matters.  Obviously, the top of the administration is the Pres. himself.  GWB was personally blamed for the poor Katrina response - let's see if the mainstream media do the same now to Obama - I doubt they will.

But the essence of the problem is that fact that we elected a good man, of that I have no doubt; but a man who had not even managed a lemonade stand in the real world.

You can have all of the desire for "hope and change" that you want, but a rookie will always be a rookie.

When you vote this year, regardless of your party affiliation, please think about the value of real experience.  I castigate those of my own conservative leanings who are Tea Partiers, who think that we need to throw out the incumbents who know how to manage our budget, our foreign policy, and our country in general in favor of rookies who know little if anything about the real worlds of business and politics.  Likewise, those on the left of similar feelings are equally naive.

Bill -

Anyone can make a mistake, but you, of all people, know the value of experience.

As a builder, did you turn a bricklayer who was working his first day on the job loose to build a complicated wall?  Same for an electrician or plumber?

If you need a coronary bypass, do you want to be the first one done by a newly minted doctor?

My post was politically neutral as to parites - it just advocated valuing experience.

Sorry, Jerry, but these experienced people have performed in a manner that would have gotten them fired., Ill put a rookie in & see what happens at this point. Govt isnt suppoed to require such grand experience. If the Founding Fathers had created a govt so cumbersome that it required people have years of experience to run it,, well,, they didnt,, so, since thats what govt has become, instead of finding pros to run it, lets just pare it down to size, so rookies can run it w/o running aground.

GWB had experience right?  didn't he run every company he managed to the edge of bankruptcy?  and his governership of texas had some bad reporcussions too right?

speaking of experience, too many politicians have no real world experience with business, all they are capable of saying is "There ought to be a law", and either don't realize the repercussions of said actions or don't care.

for example, the ban on incandescent light bulbs, the last domestic manufacturer just closed its doors and we are supposed to just blindly buy flickering, mercury filled lights from China cuz we need a green economy.  WHo wants to contaminate your fridge or oven?  

cash for clunkers, millions of decent cars were taken off the road supposedly to reduce gas consumption, yet the rules allowed such marginal improvements in mileage (I think the Ford F150 was one of the most popular buys) that the net result was minimal savings but huge expenditures in the energy to produce the new cars and the reduced supply of used cars drove up the prices of the remaining ones.

moratoriums on oil drilling, somehow it makes sense to DC that we place huge expanses of dry land in North America off limits to drilling.  Drill rigs in the North Gulf of Mexico are being towed to the South Gulf of Mexico where they will drill in even deeper water.  Not to mention the Billions in loans to Petrobras for exploration.  huh?

regulations on businesses, one section of the health care bill requires businesses to send 1099's to any supplier for more than $600 of purchases, gotta get the $ after all.  Based on that a trucking company could send 1099's to truck stops across the country.  This study says that the cost per emplyee for small firms is more than $7,600 per person. http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs264tot.pdf


hearings, what business does congress have with baseball players and steroids?  Correct me if i am wrong but lying in con-gress is part of the job description but lying too con-gress is an offense.

more ethanol in gas, drives up corn and food prices (remember the protests in Mexico a few years ago) and gives lower fuel economy but raise the CAFE standards. classic gubmint double whammy.

yep, we need more people with real world experience and common sense.

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 09/28/10 at 17:53:09:

I do,... I never learned to swim... ...

... but as far as experience,... it seems like most professional politicians learn how to be corrupt more than anything else...

Even though I disgree with John McCain, I did respect his independent thinking... until he ran for President and went pandering for votes... now he's in trouble in his primary and flipped again...
The guy's a wet fish... shoulda' retired with dignity 2 years ago...

Was watching "Shallow Hal" last night.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just look at someone and see their inner beauty (or ugliness) and know if they were good or bad?  Yea, but we can't.  We have to rely on experience.

"You can have all of the desire for "hope and change" that you want, but a rookie will always be a rookie."

Umm, so Jerry is that why you were so adament about electing Palin as VP a couple of years ago?