4-year performance gets a poor review

Forty-five years ago when I worked for Motorola, they had a motto, “Underpromise, overperform.” Quality people produced quality products, and Motorola was an industry leader.

On the other hand the motto of the Obama administration seems to be “Overpromise, underperform.” By almost any measure — be it unemployment, national debt, median family income, international respect and influence, gasoline prices, people on food stamps, families living in poverty — all are decidedly worse than they were four years ago. Candidate Obama promised to halve the national debt. Instead it has increased by $5 trillion. He promised unemployment would be under 5.6 percent, but is still over 8 percent. Billions have been spent on stimulus programs that produced no positive results, yet they keep wanting to try more of these failed programs.

To top it off the president has signed a multitude of “executive orders” with meaningless results. Gitmo is still open, TV commercials are still louder than the programs, etc. Seems that the president thinks if he wishes something to happen it will. Well, it doesn’t and hasn’t.

Now the President rates his performance as “incomplete.” The internship is over and, unlike in the Illinois Senate, voting “present” is not an alternative to making a decision.

The president says the road is now longer than it was four years ago. That means he has been leading us the wrong way, and we don’t need more of that.

I can understand how people got caught up in the enthusiasm of “hope and change” in 2008. But given the lack of performance in the last four years with “false hope” and “change for the worse,” I cannot understand how anyone would be foolish enough to fall for these empty promises and want to vote for them again.

Daryl G. Pratt

Arlington Heights