Picking a President

Picking a President

Over the next 18 months Americans will be picking a President.  Last week Senator Ted Cruz announced that he is going to run for the Republican Party nomination in 6063-presidentialseal2the 2016 US Presidential election.  I’ve been asked many times what I think of him, or of the other anticipated candidates. While I typically like to refrain from commenting on any particular politician, preferring to focus solely on policies, I think this announcement warrants analysis.

First, the President of the United States is arguably one of, if not the single most powerful person in the world.  The US is the wealthiest nation on the planet, possesses the strongest military and is the third most populous, after China and India.  The role is a massive responsibility, which very few out of the some 7.3 billion people on the planet are capable of handling successfully.

As someone who has been responsible for hiring and occasionally, rather sadly, firing employees, I know that the most important step for successfully selecting a candidate is to know just what traits they must have in order to be successful – political candidates are no different.

A candidate for President of the United States requires, at a minimum, these attributes:

  1. A clear understanding of one’s view of the appropriate role of government in people’s lives, the ability to communicate that view succinctly and to accurately assess legislation that is (and will in the future be) consistent with this view.
  2. The ability to focus the efforts of large organizations combined with a relentless desire to continually improve results relative to costs.
  3. The ability to work productively with people whose ideology and/or background vastly differs from yours.
  4. Humility – an awareness that you will not always be right, thus a candidate must possess a desire to seek the council of others, (particularly those with differing viewpoints) and a willingness to admit when you have been wrong so that an alternative path can be tried.
  5. Strong communication skills:
    • The ability to quickly understand your counterparty’s wants, needs and fears.
    • The ability to clearly convey your goals in a dignified manner that gives your counterparty a sense of being respected so that they are able to listen.
    • Enough experience to know when the time for words has passed and action is required.
    • The ability to serve as a strong leader for the American people, instilling a sense of pride and confidence in our nation’s ability to overcome challenges and in our ability as individual Americans to achieve our dreams.]

Any politician’s political views are important only after they have illustrated convincingly that they have the ability to do the job.  Anyone who has ever been responsible for hiring people has learned that it does you no good to hire someone who says everything you want to hear, but doesn’t have the skills to actually get the job done the way they say they can.

Without getting into the nitty gritty, in my opinion Senator Cruz does not demonstrate satisfactory skills in all the areas mentioned above, particularly with respect to the ability to lead large organizations.  That is not to say that he wouldn’t be able to do that successfully, perhaps he would be a natural, but he has not already demonstrated the skill set.  The role of the President is an enormous challenge for anyone and I prefer to not take the risk of having someone learn too much while on the job.  The nation is facing enormous challenges that are becoming more and more impossible to solve as the years go by.  We need a president who already has the necessary skills and can quickly and effectively step up to those challenges.

Greece – Lazy, Stupid or Evil?

Greece – Lazy, Stupid or Evil?

My regular readers are already familiar with what I like to call BUC

Lenores Law BUC

Lately I’ve been mulling over a new one, which applies quite well to the discussions around Greece, but I think is universally applicable – L4

Lenores Law L#

I was speaking with a friend of mine who lives in the States and she was asking me about the view of Greece from Italy, (I’m working from Genova, Italy at the moment) and commented on how the country really needs to get its act in gear and what is wrong with those lazy Greeks who want Germany to endlessly subsidize them.

Dog-with-perked-ears

 

My ears immediately perked up!  That sounds a lot like L4.

 

 

 

Yes, Greece is a disaster, but having been to the country, (I’m in love with Santorini and Mykonos) and having seen just how hard many of the Greeks work, my ire got up hearing that as the explanation for why the nation is struggling.  Let’s look at the data on just how lazy those Greeks really are.

Data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) shows that in 2013, Greece had the second highest number of average annual hours actually worked per worker at 2,037 hours- only Mexico worked more!

How many hours for those diligent, finger-wagging Germans?  1,388 – two thirds the hours that those lazy Greeks worked! The Germans sit at number 34, BEHIND Russia, Ireland, United States, Italy, Portugal, Canada, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, France, Denmark and Norway!  Yes, the average annual hours worked in Germany in 2013 was LESS than Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal!

So what gives?  Why is Greece and for that matter Italy, Spain and France struggling?

There is no easy answer for that, but lets take a quick look at the data.

According to data compiled by the World Bank benchmarked to June 2014, out of 189 countries ranked for ease of doing business, Greece was number 61 while Germany was number 14.  (The lower the number the easier it is.)  Italy sits at number 56, Spain at 33 and Portugal at 25.  For comparison, the United States is number 7.

For getting credit, Greece ranks number 71 while Germany was 23.

For getting electricity Greece ranks 80 while Germany ranks 3.

For enforcing contracts, Greece ranks 155 while Germany ranks 13.

So maybe it isn’t that those Greeks are lazy, stupid or evil.  Maybe they just have government bureaucracy that makes it excruciatingly difficult to earn a living, no matter how hard you work!  As a gentleman named Henry David Thoreau once said in “Civil Disobedience, “That government is best which governs least.”

Or as another fellow for whom I have a rather mad crush said, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

President Obama and the VA Scandal

I recently was in studio in New York, speaking with Neil Cavuto on the latest scandal facing President Obama’s Administration over the treatment of Veterans by the VA , involving alleged deception about the waiting time for treatment at veterans hospitals.   While it would be easy to say that this is the fault of an incompetent administration,  the reality is this is simply another example of why the size and scope of government ought to be limited.  Today the federal government is simply to big to succeed!