I want to elect a CEO-in-chief

Over a year ago, when I started this blog, I talked about how unprecedented this election would be since there wasn’t an incumbent running for the office of President for the first time in decades. Unfortunately, this election is turning out to be fairly unimpressive. While there is nothing wrong with a war hero competing against the first black presidential nominee (along with many other third-party candidates), neither candidate is particularly strong nor instills confidence in me.

On one hand, we have the politically inexperienced and scripted orator in Obama who is running on “hope” and “change,” neither of which being a particularly convincing reason to vote for him. On the other, you have passive career politician in McCain who seems willing to be everyone’s friend when it comes to passing legislation. Yes, both comments are gross generalizations of both candidates, but you get the idea. I don’t believe either can be the President that I believe this country needs: a CEO-in-chief.

What do I mean by a CEO-in-chief? Well, let’s think about it. When a company replaces a CEO for one reason or another, they try to replace him or her with someone who can better run the company. These improvements usually come about by trimming costs, tapping into new markets, and improving products/service provided to the customer. Rarely do these new CEOs call for dramatic changes (such as a food company expanding into the automotive industry) or try to appease everyone (selling hybrid cars for only $1000 while doubling union employees pay).

I want someone that say:

“Ok Congress, it is known that the transportation infrastructure is breaking down in many parts of the country. You have one year to identify the key problem areas and make available the needed funds to cover the expenses to make these repairs within four years.”

… rather than …

“Ok Congress, it is known that the transportation infrastructure is breaking down in many parts of the country. We need to devise some way to reduce the amount of traffic on the streets. I know, let’s increase rail systems to many of these out-of-the-way locations.”

As you can see from my (grossly simplistic) example, the “change” solution ends up creating a larger problem than resolving the issue at hand. By building a new railroad system, you are increasing the infrastructure unnecessarily, leading to increased up front expenses as well as long-term obligations for maintaining not only the existing road network but also the new rail network. Lee Iacocca would not have recommended the second option.

Could Obama or McCain turn out to be a good CEO-in-chief? Possibly. Neither have been placed in that situation in the past, so it is difficult for us to tell if their skillset is complete enough to pull this off. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that both will encourage further complications to the management of this country that improving the efficiency. I stand by waiting for them to prove me wrong.