I attended President Obama's Online Event with the Organizing For America folks on Thursday. I think the President made a rousing speech reminding folks of what the actual achievements were in spite of the opposition by the Party of No. I think he was quite gracious in continuing to extend the hand of friendship despite all that has happened. The question is whether the Republicans will take that hand.
As I saw the President rally the faithful, I saw the man who rose from humble beginnings. I also saw a man who seems to understand the realities of Governing. Governing is not easy. In Governing, there is no time to wonder. One has to be resolute and stand for principle. I continue to find the President's admonition that he would rather be a good one term President than a medicore two-term President to be quite a statement that seems not to have gotten as much traction as the pronoucements from the GOP blasting every single statement the President makes.
I truly am trying to understand what the GOP is trying to accomplish. They did hand the President their "solutions" which is available at http://www.gop.gov/. The GOP has truly overcome the disaster of 2008. Their website is slick and they truly seem to get the power of Social Networking. They have taken a page out of the Obama 2008 campaign and the Democrats are not getting it. When will the Democrats wake up and realize what has hit them?
Fredrick Douglas once said that, "...Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." The GOP wants to get back into power--that is clear. But, the people have to demand answers and not simply be satisifed with tired old solutions.
Barbara Boxer is the junior US Senator from California. She is a force to be reckoned with and is now the Chair of the Senate Environment Committee. She is up for re-election this year against a number of interesting Republican Opponents.
Of the three Republican opponents, the one I find the most qualified is Tom Campbell, the former Congressman and Budget Director under the present Governor. I also am fascinated by the candidacy of Carly Fiornia, the former HP and Lucent Executive who went on to found a lucrative consultancy and rose in Republican circles during the McCain campaign. I am discounting Chuck Devore because I don't think he would be able to win in a statewide primary simply because of the way California is right now.
The campaign has begun. The Boxer campaign and the California Democractic Party are focusing on Carly Fiorina and her "failed' tenure at HP. I think they are making a big mistake. What they need to understand that Carly Fiornia was not wrong in the vision she had. She was not an operations person per se. But, leaders are not necessary nuts and bolts people like her successor, Mark Hurd. But, her decision to push for the Compaq merger insured that HP emerged as one of the big three IT Players today. What the Democratic Party must do is to make sure they realize that what she represents is a throwback to the past of tax cuts, give aways to the rich and more power to big business. Simply attacking Fiornia is the wrong approach. Furthermore, the Democrats need to sit back and enjoy the Republicans slugging it out especially in light of the teabaggers and the Sarah Palin wing of the party.
Carly Fiorina gave a preview of what she envisioned when she talked about her potential candidacy at the Web 2.0 conference about the accomplishments of Barbara Boxer. That's the strategy that the Boxer Campaign has to push--a Senator who is seasoned, who speaks for all on Main Street who will do what needs to be done to represent California. Whether the political minds running the campaign for the Senator and at the Party level listen is another matter.
Whether we like it or not, the balance of power has shifted to the East. The Eminent historian Niall Ferguson discussed it during a recent editorial in the Financial Times of London. For those who doubt it, that doubt should come to an end here and now. They are graduating more engineers and are on a roll with a number of their recent achievements that I reported on here in "Outsiders".
As China marches on, America seems to continue to step back. Whether it is healthcare or education, America seems to not realize the long-term implications of inaction. One statistic that really disturbed was reporting recently done by the Chronicle of Higher Education. It showed that California, the 8th largest economy in the world, is No 46 out of the Fifty States of the United States in terms of higher education spending. I wonder how America is to hold on and maintain the edge that it wants to maintain.
Mike Pouraryan
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