Why Obama Has Slowed Down the Machine

Everyone I know seems to be saying that Obama has slowed down, rather than sped up, the recovery. The stock market is sliding and the rich are thinking of taking their money offshore. My friend Doris, a barometer of the economy because she’s been alive a long time, says this Depression feels worse than the one that happened when she was a child.

It’s been bugging me for a while why this is true, because I am a firm believer that all the things Obama says need to be fixed, actually DO need to be fixed (energy, health care, government contracting, the tax code). No one wants them fixed more than I do.

But a lesson I learned from the Apple Genius Bar will make clear what I think has happened.

I brought my MacBook into the Genius Bar because it was fairly new, but running too slowly. And I was getting frustrated. The Genius behind the Bar took one look in my Startup menu and gave me the answer. And I pass it on to you: Obama is running too many programs in the Startup menu. The Genius shut down all the little stuff I had downloaded to increase my efficiency, and the machine sped right up.

All those programs consume system resources. It’s as simple as that. The American consumer/investor doesn’t have enough RAM to deal with all those programs mentally. It’s slowing him down, and nearly paralyzing him. He doesn’t know what will happen to him next and is spending his spare time reading the stimulus bill, the TARP, the health care bill, and the tax code to find out what will happen to him. So of course he’s not at the mall, even if he still has money.

Start the machine with one program. It will run much faster that way. Then open the others when you need them, and when it starts to slow down, quit opening new programs and shut something down.

That’s what Obama should do with the country. Boot up the operating system, the economy,without anything else running. Let it run fast for a while, and then open one program at a time.

Why, with all the smart people in the White House, doesn’t this happen? Because Obama and his people are like all people with Blackberrys. They want everything to happen NOW, fast, at once.

Jack Welch was on “Morning Joe” this morning. He said that if any manager of a company tried to put in so many new initiatives at once he would whipsaw the employees and nothing would get done. I know this is true because I was guilty of that in my own companies. I actually, in my gay mad youth, MADE people fail because I wanted so many things done at once — and quickly.

So I’d advise Obama to slow down, get in touch with his breath, and focus.

Tagged as: Apple, Genius Bar, Jack Welch, Obama, Stock market