The President as Baseball Manager

In baseball, the objective truth is the best managers only allow your team to win three or four more games a year – out of a total of 162 games played during the regular season.

The athletes on the field are the ones who determine the outcome of the game. After all, there are only so many times you can pull the old ‘double switch’ to your advantage in nine innings.

If your pitchers are on their game, and your hitters do a good job of keeping their eye on the ball, you’ll have a good chance of winning on any given day.

Now, if you’re a crappy baseball manager, you can cost your team a helluva lot more than three or four losses over the course of a season. Manage the bullpen poorly, put your trust in the wrong guys at the wrong time, or fail to take advantage of your opportunities and your team will pretty much suck coconuts.

The same can be said for most Presidents.

The better ones surround themselves with good players and for the most part stay out of their way. As the team leader, a good President will set the course over a four year span and let the players play. For all his many faults, Reagan did put his finger on it when determining the ‘winner’ of any President’s term. Is the nation better off after the term of the Presidency? The answer, yea or nay, determines a successful Presidency.

Now a bad President on the other hand…

We place far too much importance on who will be our President in 2008. Our real goal should be to avoid a bad President, since a piss-poor-God awful-crappy-excuse for one (cough Bush cough) will cause far more harm to the country than any good President can hope to repair on his or her own.

Gore was never going to be our ‘only hope’.

None of the others playing the game today are our ‘only hope’.

Truth be told, our only hope out of this mess will be to tackle the challenge of fixing our problems head on for the next twenty years or so. To assume there is a quick fix is naïve.

Have a look at some of the issues we need to address:

– Get out of Iraq.

– Restore our standing in the world as a country that plays by the rules (for the most part).

– Do something about Global Climate Change.

– Restore balance to our Constitution.

– Repair our broken trade deals.

– Rebalance the Supreme Court.

– Fix the Justice Department.

– Beat back the forces wanting to merge Church and State.

– Advance the cause of Equality for our GLTB and other minority brothers and sisters.

– Try to help instead of harm our existing Middle Class.

– Reduce our massive Trade and Federal spending deficits.

– Oh yeah, fix the Health Care crisis.

– Improve our deteriorating Public Education System.

How’s that for a quick ‘off the top of your head’ list?

Do we really think any one President will be able to fix the mess in which we find ourselves? In four or eight years no less?

I believe it is time to go on offense to try and fix these problems.

I also know it will take a commitment to the long haul if we want to help make the world a better place for our children.

So yes, electing more Progressives to Congress is a good start. And removing bad Democrats from the mix is another excellent place to focus our energy. Of course, defeating asshole Republicans is a no brainer. But placing all our hopes and dreams on any one individual Democrat currently running for President?

To that I have one word.

Feh.