I wrote this in October, as I saw the winds moving towards an Obama/Biden administration. I'm reposting it, because I've received many phone calls from my fellow business owners (R's) who are curious, frightened and most importantly optimistic as President Obama sets out to right our economic ship.
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I’m a product of the "greatest generation’. The day after my mother graduated from high school, she and 3 other girls from a small Wisconsin town drove into Madison to work in a munitions plant. They shared a one-bedroom apartment and worked 13-hour days. The year before, my old man joined the Navy. No complaining, it was about coming together and winning this war, and bringing home the "boys".
(jump the broom with me)
Harry Truman became Vice President because of his efforts on the Truman Commission; briefly he knew there was gross war profiteering going on, he dropped in his old car and toured the country as a U.S. Senator and uncovered the real truth – men went to jail, contracts were canceled, graft and corruption were stopped dead in their tracks, and Harry S. Truman became the man of the hour.
This era has fascinated me forever, and I’ve not only been a student of it, but I’ve had a wealth of real life stories from my parents and their siblings, friends and extended families who were part of a movement that changed our country in many meaningful ways.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt made a call to the captains of industry and 10’s of 1,000’s of small business owners – they came by the train and plane load to lend their hand and expertise to help rebuild our Navy and increase by 100 times our air power.
Within a year, we were launching a ship a day and 100’s of planes were being rolled off the assembly lines throughout this great country. That effort changed the course of World War II and made us the economic industrial power of the world.
My hope is that President Obama and his team are as astute as Roosevelt was.
Since then, 70% of all new job growth has been created by small business. Not the auto industry, not the financial or credit industries and not the unions ...small business. We have a resource of the most innovative and common sense hard working small business owners that have been the unsung hero’s and the foundation of our economic engine of this country for decades. Whether they are Republican or Democrats, they all have a deeply personal interest in getting this country back on its feet.
If I were King for a day, I’d like to see the Obama administration make a call to this army of successful, tested leadership. I don’t think there’s anyone here that won’t agree that this Administration traded jobs for allegiance. That virtually every agency in our government has been a breeding ground of incompetence and cronyism. That those that are running these agencies haven’t a clue on what the hell they are doing and the rot within further weakens and threatens our country’s well being.
I was in Washington in June and had a long conversation with an "expert" on immigration reform. Within 10 minutes I knew this guy didn’t have a clue on what was happening on the ground on this issue. He’d read an article or two, he was good at spreading the Republican talking points, but his knowledge of the Hispanic culture, the under the radar job markets and how the communities in which this community resides in great numbers is affected, was shockingly lacking. I left a stunningly ignorant and arrogant individual who was in a policy making position very afraid.
When President Obama cleans house, I hope he makes the call that President Roosevelt did. I pray that he’ll bring in those that have made the American dream theirs, those that are the boots on the ground Americans.
There will always be a need for the bean counters and legal beagles in Washington. But I’ve never understood how you could be in charge of the Ag department if you’ve never met the challenges of running a farm or been on a tractor. I’ve never understood how you could be in charge of immigration reform if you’ve never been on a job site or in a factory and dealt with the multi-layered problems that come with hiring the Hispanic community.
President Obama, when it is time to make that call, I hope you will, and I trust my fellow brethren will meet and exceed your expectations. The true measure of a successful CEO is the quality of the people he entrusts his legacy to; I know you know that, by the quality of those you chose to help you bring you to the Presidency of the United States. We await the call to serve our country in a meaningful and substantial way.