I was saddened when I read about President-elect Obama's speech earlier this week about how some of his campaign promises weren't actually feasible. Poor guy. Looks like being a rookie at the whole leadership/campaigning thing kind of got to him.
You know how that goes. You're in the moment and you think hey wouldn't it be great if we could get a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage? Next thing you know your thought accidentally slips out of your mouth and you find yourself saying something you never meant to say. And now people actually expect you to do something that you know you really can't do. It's a terrible predicament.
But I think he's handled it well. Rather than disappoint people by saying that he made some stuff up about what his plans are, he's deftly put the blame on everyone's least favorite thing right now - the economy. Here's his quote to reporters.
“I want to be realistic here, not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on the pace we had hoped,” Obama said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” program broadcast this morning. “Everybody’s going to have to give.” (See the full article here.)
In four years when he's going through this process again, I hope then President Obama will learn from this experience. I know of at least one example of a guy who ran for President who was able to say that he lived up to all the promises he made.
Besides, it may work out for the better that President-elect Obama can't quite give us the "change" he so easily promised. As another former president said in his inaugural address, "Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the achievement, in the thrill of creative effort." Here's hoping we don't stray too far from that ideal.
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