The Role of the President

The President of the United States is like the CEO of a giant, bloated conglomerate. The President can't do a whole lot on his own. He has a million employees, and out of necessity he must depend on his employees to do the bulk of the work.

The President makes the tough executive decisions based on the information his employees provide. Sometimes the information is flawed. Sometimes it is incomplete. The President has to use his own judgment.

George W. Bush makes decisions like these. Bill Clinton made decisions like these. George H. W. Bush made decisions like these, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, etc. etc. etc. all made these decisions.

They all made the best decisions they could based on the information they had. That's what we hire them to do for four years at a time. When their time is up we can decide if we liked their decisions or if we'd rather try something else.

President Bush did not fly an airplane into the World Trade Center. Former President Clinton did not fly an airplane into the Pentagon. Both of them are human beings who made decisions based on intelligence, history, and their gut reactions.

How many of you would have believed on September 10th that it would be possible for FOUR commercial airplanes to be hijacked on AMERICAN soil at the same time and subsequently used as weapons? How many times had that happened before? What would you have done differently? Would you have been the one to step up security at airports to unprecedented levels based on the rumor of a possibility that a plane might be hijacked? How would Americans have reacted to that?

Luckily, we don't have to make those decisions. We hire someone to do it for us. All we have to decide is which CEO we want.

Posted by Jennifer at April 17, 2004 02:30 AM

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