You would think an election year would be the ideal time to have a serious discussion about the nation’s problems, and about how we are going to solve them. After all, voters should demand that any candidate who wants to become president should clearly identify the nation’s priorities and explain his or her approach to solving them.
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Instead, most of the media attention focuses on the latest story directing attention away from the many failures of the current president and his administration or on what a candidate said or did years ago or a debate or interview gaffe.
We already know President Obama will be the Democrat nominee. That gives him a major head start over his Republican challengers, which presents the perfect opportunity for him to lay out his solutions for our nation’s economic and fiscal crises, its energy challenges and its national security priorities.
Instead, what is he talking about? He is focused on the extension of a temporary payroll tax cut, which does have some small merit as a short-term measure, but does not represent a comprehensive solution to the nation’s muddled tax code or its critical need for economic growth.
President Obama is also trying to avoid what should be an easy decision – to approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the U.S. This project would add to our economic vitality and improve our energy situation. But instead, he wants to delay the decision to appease environmental extremists, which could cause that oil to be redirected to other countries.
The president continues to talk about a surtax on millionaires and people paying their “fair share.” According to whom? That plays well with the class-warfare crowd, but it doesn’t do a thing to solve the underlying problems that created our perpetual budget imbalance and mounting national debt. If the president were serious about solving the nation’s most crucial problems, he would be presenting serious solutions and working to gain the public’s support. Instead, he is focusing on short-term changes and trying to avoid any decision that might be controversial.
It’s called being in campaign mode instead of focusing on solving problems.
On the Republican side, the presidential contenders make broad references to what the major issues are, but not nearly enough about how to solve those problems. In fairness to the candidates, much of this is perpetuated by the media’s attention on day-to-day trivial matters, or who got the best of someone else in a debate exchange, and how this will play with the conservative and independent voters.
One day, a candidate is put on the defensive for a statement he or she made some years back that leads to the charge of “flip-flopping.” The next day, a campaign ad or personal attack comes under scrutiny.
All of this and more distracts from the real substance the public deserves.
I’ve often said that leadership starts with focusing on the right problems, or you will never get to the right solution. Right now, the president, Congress and, to some extent, the Republican candidates are not focusing on the right problems and not nearly enough on solutions. Neither are the media, but that’s no surprise. They never do.
But what this leads to, unfortunately, is a leadership vacuum in which the campaign conversation is focused on trivia and controversy, and candidates try to gain the upper hand by being more effective than their rivals at dealing with the trivia and controversy. The president, of course, wants to talk about anything but the nation’s real problems because he has not solved them and has demonstrated that he lacks the ability or the people around him to do so.
The American people are not stupid, although the political class often treats them as though they are. The American people are also not afraid of confronting reality, although the political class is perpetually afraid of asking them to do so.
What I fear we will get out of this process is a last-man-standing president, who takes the oath of office and has all the constitutional power contained therein, but can’t achieve real solutions with the consent of the people because he didn’t earn that consent by focusing on the right problems and real solutions.
We have a president like that already. We can’t afford another one.
