Bad to worse instead of good to great

If you do not win in professional sports, you do not reap the rewards or spoils of victory such as big salaries, product endorsements or lucrative speaking fees. In most other endeavors in life, success is achieved by perfecting the basics, mastering the details between good and great, and outperforming your competition. You are then rewarded based on specific metrics and goals. In politics, there are no metrics and goals other than getting elected. Elected officials do not impose metrics and goals on themselves by which to be held accountable. It's just a never ending series of promises and political claims of success, which are subjective at best. And if they win at getting elected, but lose at doing the job for which they were elected, they get paid anyway. I'm talking about members of Congress and the presidency.

It takes a great leader in the White House to achieve good results in Congress. We have not had such a leader in decades. That's why we are living in a political nightmare. We go from bad to worse instead of from good to great. In President Obama’s State of the Union address on January 20, he claimed that “The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong.” Oh really! Here are a few facts by which we can measure his tenure as president:

• Annual Gross Domestic Product growth has been about 2 percent per year, which is less than half of the economy's capacity for growth.
• The lowest labor participation rate in decades, which means a real unemployment rate of more than 10 percent instead of the widely reported 5.6 percent.
• Americans who have joined the food stamp program since 2009: 13 million
• Americans who have fallen into poverty since 2009: 5.5 million
• Decline in median household income since Obama became president: $2,484
• Number of Americans who will no longer have employer-sponsored health insurance thanks to ObamaCare: 7 Million
• Increase in family health premiums under Obama: $4,154
• The United States of America has no foreign policy strategy.

This administration has never allowed facts to get in the way of its constantly misleading narrative. And the big tree causing that shadow of crisis is still there, which means the crisis is still there. We are going from bad to worse. To change that direction we must ensure this administration isn’t followed by another one just like it. Control of both chambers of Congress by Republicans is a good start, but there will be no great achievements for the people with a Democrat president and administration. Even with a Republican administration and Republican control of both chambers of Congress, we can only hope for things to go from bad to better. Unlike professional sports, we can only make changes every two years and four years, respectively, for members of Congress and the presidency. Also, the replacements are not determined by a small board of directors, but by a large electorate easily manipulated by the liberal media narrative and political optics. A change in direction for our nation would require removing the tree and not just the shadow. You can't remove the shadow without removing the tree. At least, let's make the tree smaller. I'm talking about government, which is too big, has too many branches and is far too intrusive. Otherwise, we will continue to go from bad to worse.