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.
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