During a campaign swing through Texas today, President Obama explained his philosophy of life. According to NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, who live tweeted the president’s remarks, Obama said “If I do something and it doesn’t work, I don’t do it again.”
Inventors from Thomas Edison to Bill Gates to Steve Jobs would probably counter with “Well, that explains why you’ve never achieved anything.” It also explains his open disdain for business success: He doesn’t even understand how difficult success really is.
The fact is, it’s often the 100th try after 99 failures that produces the breakthrough. To put things into terms the president can relate to, in baseball, a good hitter can expect to hit his way to base about one third of the time. Home run king Babe Ruth was also the major league strikeout king. Soccer strikers can expect a goal maybe one out of every five or six shots on target. The path to achievement is littered with failures, along with the decision not to be a quitter. Obama, by his own remarks, identifies himself with quitters.
The president’s statement suggests that he should stand down and announce that he is not seeking re-election. Very little about his four years in office could be said to have “worked,” unless he intended to waste nearly a trillion dollars with no impact on unemployment.
Updated: Related…Alan Greenspan says that Obama’s stimulus not only did not help the economy, it made things worse. Yet Obama keeps wanting to have another stimulus.
If he follows his own rules then that would mean no more Stimulas for Shovel Ready Jobs that don’t really exist ’cause that didn’t work. No more Tax payer funding of Green energy companies because that ain’t working either. Cash for clunkers didn’t work, don’t try that again Mr. President. Auto bailouts didn’t help sell the Chevy volt, we can stop doing that. Everyone thinks Obamacare isn’t going to work so why are we plowing ahead with that monstrosity? Three years and three budgets from the White house that got zero votes from Congress, well, obvioulsy you gave up on that one, why bother any more? Fast and furious didn’t work and got people killed to boot, no more gun running. Border enforcement aint really working, and I see you’re closing the border gaurd stations to prove it. Unemployment has been above 8% for your entire term in office, so your economic plans don’t work. You told Matt Lauer in 2009 that if you couldn’t turn the economy around in three years your presidency would be a one term proposition. Times up, sir, it ain’t working.
However, you don’t want Gyro Gearloose trying stimulus for the 99th time on the entire economy, because even though it didn’t work the first 98 times, there;s always HOPE for it to be different this time. Such experimentation is for probate madmen in their own workshops with their own money.
And BTW, Bill Gates is hardly an example of an inventor who failed many times before succeeding. Gates and Allen did have one failed attempt at making a traffic light controller, learned from that, and succeeded brilliantly on their next project; Altai BASIC, which led to the founding of “micro-soft”. You know the rest of the story.
Apple was similar. The Apple I was a bare circuit board that sold a few hundred copies. They put it in a case, and renamed it the Apple II, and the rest is history.
No futzing around with a hundred failures for them.
*probate = private. Stupid spellchecker.
When I first read the tweet, I thought the exact same thing about Obama being a quitter. And my very first analogy was also to baseball (great minds thinking alike and all that).
I went with Hank Aaron, who went 0 for 5 in his first ever major league game with the Atlanta Brave. If Aaron had Obama’s character and intestinal fortitude, he never would have become the third highest on the all time hits list (3771, behind only Ty Cobb and Pete Rose). He simply would have taken his bat and glove and gone home. Why even show up the next day for the next game?
Part pf the measure of a man is not how he reacts to success, but how he reacts to failure. And in Obama’s case, he reacts by…quitting.
when he said that. Nothing he did has worked, and he keeps doing it.
But there’s a hitch.
For him, when it doesn’t work, i.e., when it’s bad for us, it’s working!
So, he keeps at it.
That’s what happens when you are an affirmative action president. You pretty much don’t know anything like you ought to at his age. A Presidential wasteland.
“If I do something and it doesn’t work, I don’t do it again.”
But Obama wants another Stimulus Package, when the first one was a failure.
You missed the point. The Stimulus plan worked exactly as planned. No positive effect on unemployment, just more debt for the American taxpayer. Please retread your Cloward-Piven. The plan is lots of debt, fewer taxpayers, and much higher government dependence. The stimulus worked perfectly, this is why he keeps wanting to do it again.
Compare Obama’s attitude towards the American Dream to Walt Disney’s:
“There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow’s just a dream away
Man has a dream and that’s the start
He follows his dream with mind and heart
And when it becomes a reality
It’s a dream come true for you and me
So there’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away”
(Lyrics from “Carousel of Progress”, one of the last attractions Walt himself worked on.)
If what Obama says is true, someone should ask why he is running for a second term.