Last week, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) took on President Obama's record, arguing, "President Obama hasn't run anything before he was elected President of the United States. Never ran a state, never a business, never ran a lemonade stand."
The focus groups must have loved this, because Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus argued yesterday:
"[N]o matter what David Axelrod may say, President Obama's private business experience hasn't seen the inside of a lemonade stand."
This is a pretty standard criticism for any presidential candidate whose background is legislative work. Recent major-party nominees like John McCain, John Kerry, and Bob Dole -- none of whom served as a governor or business leader -- faced similar critiques.
But as we've talked about before, these criticisms of Obama's record were made four years ago. Since early 2009, he's been president of the United States during a time of foreign and domestic crises. Obama may not have led a state or a business before getting elected, but he led a nation after getting elected.
The larger arc to all of this is that Republicans are eager to fight the last war -- redoing the 2008 campaign as if it never occurred. It's why we still hear so much talk from the right about Jeremiah Wright, birth certificates, and Obama's pre-2008 experiences.
If you missed it, there was a good segment on this on Friday night.
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Who cares if PBO has not had any experience running a business? When has tihe experience of running a business in the private sector, have been an arbiter of someone's ability to be POTUS? If that is the criteria for president then I think most of our presidents would not qualify for the office. It's a bogus argument that should be thrown out on its lack of merit.
Well, well... it seems it is dawning on the GOP that having made the decision to have their one-and-only political goal over the past four years be to sabotage the presidency of Barack Obama - they've got absolutely nothing to run on except a fictional Obama from 2008 who never existed, and an attempt to paint the president with the "no-record-to-run-on" colors of their own nominee.
Yes sir those good old republicans know business. Look at all the businesses GW failed at. Now it's time to grab Mitt. What do Mitt and GW have in common? They both made fortunes off of the government. Bush used business grants Mitt used the government to cover his theft of company retirement plans.
Duhhhh!
The implication they are trying to convey is that Pres. Obama has no "business" experience and their candidate has all business experience and that running a country is running a BUSINESS which is why Pres. Obama is failing to improve the economy (what they say; not I). The RepugniCANT Congress has nothing to do with the slow recovery. Whateva . . .I'm tired of it. All of it! There is nothing they can do or say that would get me to sit up and listen to them - let alone believe any of it!
And round and round we go.
President Obama has done a very good job running things, after all he was able to manage his own life and he will go down in history as one of the best Presidents the U.S. has ever known. He was able to pull off bringing this country up from ground zero ,and to help in aiding those of us to once again try for The American Dream each of us was promised a very, very, long time ago. Godspeed to President Obama. Shame on you, GOP.
His record as president for these past three years would seem to me to be experience and on balance a fair to good job of it. What we don't need as another trainee for on the job experience.
This is a case of Republicans grasping for straws; they have no substantive issues for the election campaign.
It's also an implicit admission that they can't really attack on the substance of Obama's term in office, otherwise there wouldn't be the pretense that 2012 is just a continuation of 2008.
They can't believe they lost in 2008, so they're convinced that if they JUST. YELL. LOUDER. it'll work this time...
According to Bill Clinton the" Amateur "is in there right now. "Hope and Change"
How's that working out for ya!
So, were you on a ship during the Korean war? What about war makes you so excited. It is truly boring. I do not hear any music coming out of a broken record.My Dad also served during that time. Thank God ,it was at a time when the world was at Peace. You were pretty young though.
Working out pretty well, thanks! It'd be working out better if there weren't a bunch of GOP hacks gumming things up in an effort to make it seem like they're a better choice... but when you sling sh!t, more tends to get on you than the other guy.
Apparently, according to Mitt, it all depends on what kind of executive you are/have been. Running a state (Gov. R-money), or a country (Pres. Obama) doesn't count; that's why R-money doesn't mention his stint in Massachusetts and prefers to forget Obama's 3+yr experience of being the top executive of USA. The only executive/business experience that does count is that of R-money's at Bain, dismembering ailing firms (aka "vulture capitalism") and my neighbor's 7yr old's effort at peddling lemonade at the street corner near her house (aka "big parental bailout")
It's amazing... 4 yrs of Obama and we're broke, still at war, divided at the core and still full of B.S. Some change. I'll not say either one truly excite me, Both GOP prez's and Dem prez's have robbed me of personal liberties, are both guilty of "beltway" deals and influence that benefit some at the expense of all, and both generally will attempt to blame the other party when something fails vice doing what we teach our kids to do which is accept responsibility when you fail, learn from it and move on smartly....or does that not apply to politics.... clearly we are failing when we are taking a president to task by talking leadership comparisons to a lemonade stand...really?! Is there another Abe Lincoln out there? Also we'll never have another shot at popular vote w/ our current 2 party electoral voting system...just FYI so when another douchebag ends up in office that no one really wanted everyone will understand.
A substantitive teaching/training method of the Repulican campaign strategy is that repeating misinformation 9 times convinces subjective truth.
Obama's lack of business experience, as well as his collectivist view, became very apparent in the results achieved over the past 3.5 years, haven't they?
Aren't you progressive tools here embarassed about such lack of rational thought you continually display? You are as shallow and unintellectual as they come.
The results have been excellent, considering that there has been active resistance to anything that might improve the economy by the GOP, who have sacrificed any pretense of working to help Americans in their quixotic quest to tar Obama with their own failure. You would be quite familiar with the idea of lacking rational thought, since your attitude says that you've failed to actually analyze what has happened over the past few years and instead just gone along with whatever line you are fed by whomever you prefer to have think for you.