Carol Platt Liebau was first female managing editor of the Harvard Law Review;
It reminds me a little bit of my experience with him when he was president of the Harvard Law Review. You know, I hesitated to say a lot about this during the campaign because I really thought maybe it wasn’t fair. That maybe, finally, when he got to be President, this would be a job big enough to engage and hold Barack Obama’s sustained interest, because really, is there a bigger job out here?
[…]
[W]hen he was at the HLR you did get a very distinct sense that he was the kind of guy who much more interested in being the president of the Review, than he was in doing anything as president of the Review.
A lot of the time he quote/unquote “worked from home”, which was sort of a shorthand – and people would say it sort of wryly – shorthand for not really doing much. He just wasn’t around. Most of the day to day work was carried out by the managing editor of the Review, my predecessor, a great guy called Tom Pirelli whose actually going to be one of the assistant attorney generals now.
He’s the one who did most of the day to day work. Barack Obama was nowhere to be seen. Occasionally he would drop in he would talk to people, and then he’d leave again as though his very arrival had been a benediction in and of itself, but not very much got done.
So, you know, you see that and you think, gosh, maybe that’s the way the guy operates, hut then you figure ok, obviously he always had his eye on bigger and better things.
But now he’s President…there really isn’t a bigger or better thing.
The full audio is here. (2011 update – link has expired)
“Somebody had to say the obvious. Barack Obama is tying himself in knots. Andy Grove does in the Washington Post.”
*”The entropy devil”
Wretchard:
“They’re busy because crisis creates an “opportunity” for their own vague revolution.”
As V.I. Lenin asked,
“**What Is to Be Done?”
O has the answer: “the worse, the better”.
O’s modus operandi? Hurry, hurry! Into the future.
…-
*http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/03/11/the-entropy-devil/#comments
**http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Nikolai_Chernyshevsky
I don’t know…is Obama ultimate proof of the Peter Principle or an enhanced version of the Dilbert Principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_Principle
You decide. Maybe we need a poll.
>>>> “Obama and his administration have largely refused to bow to reality.”
The narcissist “*Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance”.
…-
“A Presidential Crisis of Competence
Less than two months into this administration, three things are clear.
First, its agenda is every bit as radical as many of us expected and feared. Based on President Barack Obama’s supposedly unimportant past, there was every reason to believe that this would happen. That some Obama supporters are surprised is a “tribute” to a media elite that treated decade-plus relationships with radicals Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and others as “distractions from the real issues,” and to a McCain campaign that refused to treat Obama’s candidacy as the threat that it was, and now is.
Second, despite strong signals that he is guiding the ship of state in the wrong direction, Obama and his administration have largely refused to bow to reality.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2204609/posts
*http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections
Executive managment styles are as diverse as there are executives. POTUSes have had very distinct ones:
Jimmy Carter was a complete control freak right down to checking the WH tennis court bookings (i’m not kidding) and he was a huge failure.
Eisenhower was supremely organized as you might expect and made many of the decisions – probably the best one at it on a day to day basis. Not so much on being creative however…
Reagan was very lassiz faire and let his cabinet and others handle the details whilst having an iron hand over the overall direction of policy and that strong philosphical theme created a fertile policy development environment – very empowering and thus not surprisingly he has a very strong policy legacy.
Nixon would screw-off for weeks on policy and decisions that did not interest him. Yet he was very, very good on strategy(agree with it or not) and very sharp during crisis periods. As a result he impressed many who dealt with him as being the most intelligent POTUS of the 20th century (Greenspan who worked closely with both thinks that Clinton was the smarter by a narrow margin). He thrived on crisis (and boasted about how good he was at dealng with it to the point of writing a book six crisis about it) which is good when you have one but very discouraging for those around you when there isn’t.
My point is Obama’s hours on the job – in the office – aren’t necessarily the issue. It is more important to see how good he is at focussing and managing and making good decisions in the midst of a crisis. And how good he is at providing philophical direction to those around him. Arguably we are currently in the greatest crisis that requires intense day in day out attention from the POTUS since WW2 and i include 9/11 and Cuba as the aftermath of 9/11 was very calm and the Cuba crisis was very short-lived.
So far I can see nothing but that Obama’s conduct to have been an abysmal failure – his handling of things has been a large net negative by far. This is very distressing as their are far bigger crisis in the offing, especially if Obama appears to be a weak leader in the eyes of America’s enemies.
…
Many people have tried to compare Obama to various Canadian Leaders – trudeau being a natural. But Trudeau was much more substantive policy-wise and certainly very good at the details of certain parts. The guy whose work ethic and style he most resembles to me is Allan Rock. Rock was a complete narcissist who, when he was president of the CDN Bar Assn apparently ran it into the ground financially, – presumably to further his political career. As a cabinet minister he was also a big showboat looking for the photo-op. Thankfully we have never let him get the chance to be PM…
Not stirred enough was obviously shaken too much as a baby.
He’s the one who did most of the day to day work. Barack Obama was nowhere to be seen. Occasionally he would drop in he would talk to people, and then he’d leave again as though his very arrival had been a benediction in and of itself, but not very much got done.
It pretty much sums up how he is managing the country. The stock market has him figured out, it’s been dropping like a rock since his inauguration, and people that have real money in the game are the one’s whose opinions are the most lucid.
Obama is the Empty Suit.
The emperor is all clothes. Still, a lot of people I have talked to are “hooked on the feeling” of voting for the first black president. They are clearly not yet ready to give up the illusion, well, by now, I think we need to start calling it a delusion, that we elected a competent, sterling, president who will make the world love us.
Barak Obama is the logical outcome of affirmative action: He’s smart enough, articulate enough, and attractive enough and, then, to top it off, he is a “victim” because he was raised by a single mom in a fatherless home and he’s black (for all intents and purposes). In short, Obama’s a real poster boy for affirmative action:
YES, HE CAN!
But having a poster boy, with his poster girl wife and his poster girl children, is hardly what the American people need at this moment in history.
To think that Americans fell for a President because of the colour of his skin and not his track record is actually breathtaking.
not stirred enough-
You sound like the kind of exec that ran ENRON….”what me? I don’t know anything!”
If you aren’t in the office everyday doing the work, then you don’t really know what’s going on in your company. Get your lazy elitist ass to work.
Taking a job and then not showing up is alot like voting “present”, is it not?
I give Barrack an A+ for doing his job
Posted by: not stirred enough said at March 11, 2009 2:07 PM
Ha ha! Excellent insight; evidently you’re not big on “leading from the front”. That’s OK; neither is D’ohbama. I’m sure your executive US counterparts – equally perceptive and useful – have rushed to the porkulus trough for cash handouts.
Oink.
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
I’m a domestic engineer, VP in charge of Operations, also.
Translation:
I share household ‘operations’ with my spouse.
not stirred likes the title too.
Don’t give that title too much credit.
This article should allay everyone’s fear of Obama’s socialist agenda. If he actually has one he lacks the initiative to implement said agenda.
That’s ok Joe, jet flying Nancy has him covered.
“To think that Americans fell for a President because of the colour of his skin and not his track record is actually breathtaking.”
I don’t know BTAB, we fell for cretin and “I smell a fart” martin (caps left off on purpose for these scum’s names) and we STILL haven’t given PM Harper a majority.
It just goes to show you that the media telling people how to think, actually works.
Dave; Your 4:25pm comment was right on. In fact, Obama himself said in the immediate few days following his election that he was going to use the time before his inauguration to craft a stimulus package so that he could hit the ground running once sworn in.
Instead, he had nothing prepared, handed it of to congress to do, and didn’t even lay out some simple parameters like insisting on no trade protectionism. When Pelosi did precisely that, Obama had to come rushing in to put out the fire. The man is a total amateur.
Another curious omission is that there has been no mention of BO’s IQ. This issue came up with GWB quite routinely and large numbers of articles appeared comparing GWB with his democratic rivals. Surely if BO was more intelligent than GWB we’d hear about this. Perhaps being the first POTUS with an IQ
Still fighting the campaign, I see.
It appears that the less-than symbol is a nono in posting. The last line should be: Perhaps being the first POTUS with an IQ less than 100 is not something the democratic party wants to publicize.
“… The guy whose work ethic and style he most resembles to me is Allan Rock. Rock was a complete narcissist……… – presumably to further his political career. As a cabinet minister he was also a big showboat looking for the photo-op……..
Posted by: Gord Tulk at March 11, 2009 8:17 PM”
Boy you nailed that one 100%..!!
my mother is suffering from vascular dementia and she is more ” with it ” than the big O, it is embarrassing. Enough said.
How many of us in the workplace would be rewarded for showing up only occasionally, and doing no work (present)?
Buyer’s remorse must be gnawing at the kool-aid drinkers big time.
I’d like to think, or rather, hoped, that he’d work out – but we now have to be realistic. If I lean on a hot stove it doesn’t take long to pull back. Since it’s appearent that everything done so far is bad, clearly wrong, or distructive, then perhaps his doing nothing would be the safest approach for the country.
I’d like to think, or rather, hoped, that he’d work out – but we now have to be realistic. If I lean on a hot stove it doesn’t take long to pull back. Since it’s appearent that everything done so far is bad, clearly wrong, or distructive, then perhaps his doing nothing would be the safest approach for the country.
I’d like to think, or rather, hoped, that he’d work out – but we now have to be realistic. If I lean on a hot stove it doesn’t take long to pull back. Since it’s appearent that everything done so far is bad, clearly wrong, or distructive, then perhaps his doing nothing would be the safest approach for the country.
“Still fighting the campaign, I see.”
Well, you guys did it for eight years and it worked for you. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. His numbers are dropping, 1 in 20 of the remaining people who support him change their mind and he is a lame duck.
She decided not to say anything during the campaign because it might not have been “fair”? Fair to who. Her silence certainly wasn’t fair to the American people. They deserved to know this. Typical media.
Liebau’s comments track with what was observable during the election campaign as well as throughout the transition: for Obama, “being” is really what motivates him, not “doing.” Coupled with extraordinary personal ambition, this sense explains why the four years he’ll occupy the White House will be the longest he’ll have held any job in his entire life.
When I saw the phony “presidential seal,” when I saw the pretentious Greek columns, when I learned about the striking of the “President Obama” commemorative coins before election day, and when I saw the phony “Office of the President-Elect,” I knew that we are dealing with a man who is utterly taken with the trappings of the presidency, but isn’t interested in the nuts-and-bolts of it.
That’s why Nancy & Harry are running the show, and Obama’s just signing whatever they put under his nose.
For Obama, the presidency is simply a fascination with “baubles and shiny things.” He likes the pomp and flourish… He likes seeing Marine guards having to salute him… He likes having a Secret Service detail with him wherever he goes… He likes mugging for pop magazine cover photo shoots… He likes the Wednesday night parties in the White House, with the live entertainment, the conga lines and the $100/pound steaks… He likes having a 747 as a private jet he can take to pseudo campaign events like the signing of the “stimulus” bill that he didn’t even read.
Obama learned probably some time during high school that he could get a lot of mileage from White Guilt and its assorted compensation mechanisms like affirmative action and racial quotas for college admissions. For example, as interesting as Liebau’s comments are they miss the peculiarity of how someone with such a la-de-da attitude toward legal research and writing made it onto the Harvard Law Review in the first place, not to mention how he became president of it.
If it weren’t for his ceding of all power to Nancy & Harry, Obama would be largely harmless as president. But it’s precisely because he won’t even try to check their hard left course which is going to make his first (and only) term in office Jimmy Carter’s second.
Taylor: “For Obama, the presidency is simply a fascination with ‘baubles and shiny things.’ … as interesting as Liebau’s comments are they miss the peculiarity of how someone with such a la-de-da attitude toward legal research and writing made it onto the Harvard Law Review in the first place, not to mention how he became president of it.”
The baubles and shiny things I call Obama Bling. Yeah. He likes all the trappings of power, is really enjoying the high-flying lifestyle, but hasn’t a clue how the inner workings of the government operate, let alone how to be the Commander in Chief. Isn’t there a YouTube interview with Michelle, in which she says “he’s not ready” for the presidency. It wasn’t long after that that his campaign began.
As for Obama’s position on the Harvard Law Review and his becoming its president: like I said last night at 10:30, it’s amazing — or not so amazing — what affirmative action programs can do for someone if they’re in the right — or should I say left? — victim demographic.
multirec, when I made the comment “To think that Americans fell for a President because of the colour of his skin and not his track record is actually breathtaking,” I didn’t mean to compare the U.S. to Canada. Rather, I was saying that while Canada was going to Hell in a hand basket under the Librano$, the Americans were doing a pretty good job of carrying the flag. The fact that the U.S. now has a moonbat leader, voted in because of the colour of his skin, is pretty depressing — and who would have thunk it just a few short years ago?
“Unprepared to be the First, RUSHING to be the Worst!”
Obama has always been a poseur. He championed himself as a “community organizer”, “civil right’s attorney” and a brilliant HRC leader. All are shams.
Virtually none of his supporters know that Obama spent less than 2 years as a community organizer over 20 years ago. He retired or was retired from the one law firm he worked for after barely 3 years of service in which he barely billed as many hours as a 1-year intern? And now we find as expected he was an AA choice for the HLR and did virtually nothing while there. It explains why unlike all the other leaders of the HLR he published NOTHING. But to hear his Obam-orons, he emerged to save us after struggling for decades fighting as a “community organizer” and “civil rights attorney”?
Do leftist have NO shame whatsoever to be so easily fooled by such a scam artist or it is that they can’t get past their pride to admit they were fools?
@sasquatch: “They sent 30+ “investigative journalists” to Alaska to dig up dirt on Palin but never sent anyone to Chicago………”
Stanley Kurtz of the National Review was the one and only journalist who looked at the files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, aka the Billy Ayers Slush Fund.
And I think there were a lot more than just 30 panty-sniffers snooping around Wasilla during September last year. Hell, they had that many satellite vans parked outside Joe the Plumber’s house at one point.
I’m pretty sure that the performance of the national media in the election of 2008 will earn a footnote in the history books, under the section about the spectacular failure that was the Obama administration. Chris Matthews can be the bizarro antimatter Ida Tarbell.
@sasquatch: “They sent 30+ “investigative journalists” to Alaska to dig up dirt on Pallin but never sent anyone to Chicago………”
Stanley Kurtz of the National Review was the only journalist who bothered to go through the files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, aka the Billy Ayers Slush Fund.
And I think there were a lot more than 30 panty-sniffers snooping around Wasilla in September. Hell, they had that many satellite vans parked outside Joe the Plumber’s house at one point.
If there’s one bright spot in this whole mess, it’s that the national media finally gave up being coy about “objectivity.” They went all-in and rolled their cards, once and for all. This will end either with their utter bankruptcy, or with their bailout by the government and absorption into a servile Cuban-style state press. In either case, they will never again enjoy the prestige and trust they once garnered.