Focus, Mr. President
As a youngster my father was always preaching to me about focus. He was a very successful senior officer of an auto manufacturing firm, and as an engineer knew the importance of focusing on the problem at hand. He said it would help me chose a career best suited for my talents, and focus would help me survive in the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism.
Unfortunately my father is not around to pass that career advice on to President Obama. But billionaire investor Warren Buffet apparently feels the way my father did, because he’s calling on Mr. Obama to focus on the economy right now.
Saying on CNBC that the economy “has fallen off a cliff”, he is urging the Administration to put aside its desire to juggle many issues at once, such as heated partisan issues including health care and education reform and global warming, and instead concentrate on waging an “economic war” to fix the economy and the banking system.
Buffett harkened back to World War Two for analogies. For example, he said after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt put aside many domestic programs to focus on the war effort. Early in his presidency, Mr. Roosevelt pulled the country out of the Great Depression with many domestic initiatives designed to get people working again.
(There is some debate as to whether it was government programs such as the WPA or the start of World War Two that brought the economy back, but he did create millions of jobs in the 30’s.)
Mr. Obama is no doubt saddled with mind-numbing problems beyond the economy. Fighting wars in two countries, guarding against terrorism and responding to regional issues such as a deteriorating drug problem in Mexico certainly demand his attention. But I suggest that a strong U-S economy gives President Obama the clout to deal with such serious global issues. Without that, we are just another country that lived beyond its means, and is now paying a huge price.
Mr. President, please focus, focus, focus.
(Brian Banmiller is a national Business Correspondent for CBS News Radio, free lance writer and public speaker. The former television business news anchor in San Francisco can be reached at brian@banmilleronbusiness.com .)
