It is more than evident that President Obama’s lack of experience has hurt him significantly in the areas of decisive decision making and more so in his ability to provide strong leadership, two critical traits needed to ensure a successful presidency and that can only be learned through years of experience of which the Jr. Senator and south side Chicago community organizer has very little of.
Another extremely important aspect to ensure a successful presidency is to appoint good people to your cabinet and the various other staff and support assignments. There are numerous positions that a president must fill covering a vast array of disciplines and knowledge bases. Filling those positions with competent and trustworthy people whom are experts in the particular field that the position pertains to will make the difference between an administration's success and failure.
Prior to being elected as the President of the United States, Barack Obama had been in politics for just 12 years, only 4 of which were at the national level, the balance he served as an Illinois State Senator with his efforts almost exclusively focused on issues of equality and rising Chicago’s lower class. Before his entrance into politics Obama worked as a civil rights attorney and was a part time lecturer then senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School (no, Obama was not a constitutional law professor as he claims).
Neither of Obama's pre-political positions provided him with any practical exposure to those working in the ranks of politics. Serving on the Illinois State Senate granted him only minimal exposure to national political figures and private sector professionals. As a Junior US Senator, Obama had hardly gotten his feet wet before choosing to make a run for the presidency. In short, Barack Obama’s short and very isolated time in politics left him with a very limited list of potential candidates of which he had close personal knowledge to their unique skillsets and qualifications.
An indictment to Obama’s lack of knowledge of qualified individuals to bring into his administration is the high turn-over rate of his own cabinet members. Of the 21 cabinet positions, serving in the Obama Administration, only 4 have not been turned over two of which are Vise President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder, whom will be parting ways with the president shorty. The remaining positions have all been turned over at least once and some as many as three times. And while it is not unusual for cabinet members to come and go, the number of turn-overs experienced by the Obama Administration thus far is staggering. With all things being equal (correcting for cabinet sizes and two full terms in office), the rate of turn-overs experienced during the Obama Administration’s first 5 years puts it on a trajectory to reach 90 different cabinet members by the end of the presidents second term, double that of any other administration looking back as far as JFK, the one exception of course is the Ford administration which had to clean house and nearly start from scratch following the Watergate scandal.
We have seen it time and again with this administration, as they experience one political folly after another, the problem being traced back to the lack of qualifications of the person in charge, such as was the case with both Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki. Of course, not all staff members are under qualified and we have seen as well, on many occasions, the president ignore the advice of many of his senior staff members and advisors.
This is not to say that it is impossible for an individual with limited time in politics to put together a good team. With thorough due diligence and embracing the assistance of trusted senior members, very strong candidates for cabinet and other appointed positions in one’s administration can be sought out. Selecting from a list of friends, acquaintances and those who have or will provide political favor will only lead to failure as our president is experiencing this very moment.
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