Posted by Erick Erickson
A friend of mine told me about a meeting he had with Goldman Sachs’ CEO in Atlanta at the beginning of the year. Someone asked the CEO what he thought of the new Obama administration. The CEO admitted he voted for Obama, but then said how stunned he was at lack of advisors surrounding Obama who had come from the private sector.
In fact, a new study shows Obama has fewer advisors who’ve made a living in the private sector than any other American President in the last 108 years — since the turn of the 20th century when the business of America became business.
This is not to say that the Chief Executive should have private sector experience. And this is not to say that the Chief Executive should employ only people from the private sector. But it is to say that we should not trust a Chief Executive to know how to fix the private sector or “create competition” in health care when there is hardly a person near him who knows anything about job creation.
That is the key. More Americans than every before are on government handouts and the Democrats intend to take over 1/6th of the American economy — health care. This is an administration that has no understanding of and no commitment to the free market and the private sector, both of which are, at best, academic studies to ninety percent of Obama’s top advisors.
The Republican Party should be able to exploit this issue. The American people, at the end of the day, believe in, work in, and want to support the private sector. Contrary to the Obama and New York Times spin that there is no stigma attached to food stamps, the American people do not want to be dependent on the government for their food, health care, or income.
But that is Obama’s solution. To every problem, Obama offers government. He can offer no other because he has surrounded himself with no job creators, no producers, no captains of industry, and no free market champions. That’s not the change the American people were hoping for.
