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jusq2 | 9 years ago

The guy was unqualified for the job.

Just think about what it takes to be sitting on top of the massive hierarchy that is the govt.

If there is an issue X you need to know who to talk to, who to trust, who has power and influence to make things happen, what you can offer them in return etc etc. How the fuck was Obama ever qualified to know all that?

So if you have an issue with Education or Pakistan or Wall Street lots of delegation happens to random people who have their own agendas.

So what happened in his first couple years, was he was just used by much more savvy operators. And once he realized it, he spent the remaining years trusting no one.

You can't take someone with a few years of real world experience put them in charge of a massive org and expect them to know what they are doing.

But unfortunately as Daniel Kahnemen says there is huge demand for overconfidence. So we end up with leaders like Obama and Trump.

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jakeogh|9 years ago

He was definitely in over his head. The constant vacations and 333 golf outings are telling imho. Major props to him for keeping us out of a large scale war though.

"someone with a few years of real world experience put them in charge of a massive org" is objectively not Trump. However you want to cut it, he has an adult life of real-world experience doing exactly that.

hirsin|9 years ago

I wish the vacations bit would die a quick death. He was present more often than Bush. I haven't seen much that says he was in over his head, would appreciate some accounts of that.

I'd also argue the connection between running a large org and being skilled in any specific area - you don't expect Satya to understand the specifics on how the azure VM is set up, that's why you have a VP.

jusq2|9 years ago

True about Trump having the experience with a large org and what it takes to run it, but its going to take him a while to learn the DC org chart being an outsider and thats going to be his biggest weakness in getting anything done.

EDIT: to be clear I don't think Trump is qualified