Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Newt and Rick Fail Leadership test

How can you run a country when you can’t run a campaign?  That is the first question that popped into our heads upon learning that Presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry had failed to gather the requisite number of signatures to appear on the Virginia ballot. 
The Commonwealth of Virginia requires that in order to have your name listed on the primary ballot you must find 10,000 legal Virginia residents willing to sign a petition that your name appear.  Virginia law further states that those signatures must include at least 400 residents from each of the commonwealth’s eleven voting districts.  Apparently Newt was able to gather 12,000 signatures but that total did not include at least 400 signatures from each of the eleven voting districts.  At stake are the votes of 49 delegates.   
Oops! 
Perry has been relatively quiet about his campaign’s muck up; Newt not so much.  A senior advisor to Gingrich called the Virginia law draconian and made some comparison to the December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor that was too convoluted for us to comprehend. 
The Virginia law has been in place for decades.  It is a law that candidates for governor, state attorney general and  a whole host of other local candidates have easily managed to comply with over the years; but not Newt…and not Rick.  Their failure to comply is an embarrassment to their campaigns and a telling indication of their leadership ability.  This is particularly true for Newt who is a Virginia resident.  
Here’s the thing.  The campaign for the Presidency is a test within itself.  It involves organization, time management, fund raising, budgeting, messaging and the co-ordination of a number of rapidly moving parts.  If you can’t manage a campaign, how do you expect the voters to trust you with managing a country?   

No comments:

Post a Comment