But Can He Decide?

Tomorrow we inaugurate Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. The moment that he takes the oath of office he will be forced to make a series of decisions. For the next four years he will make decisions big and small and every single one of them will have an impact.

Barack Obama has never had to make decisions before. He's never been in an executive position. In the Illinois Senate he studiously avoided making decisions on the votes that he placed. I'm not trying to re-run the campaign. Barack Obama is set to become my president for the next four years. May God bless him and guide him. But I have a huge worry and that is that I don't know anything about his quality to make decisions. Does he waffle and second guess? Does he make knee-jerk decisions? Can he lay down the law? Does he have the ability to stay the course when the American public tells him that he's wrong but he knows that he's right? Can he make a decision that droves down his poll numbers but is the right decision for the USA? Will he be able to ignore the clamor of world leaders and do what is right for the USA? We simply don't know.

That is my biggest concern with the man--we don't know how he makes decisions. As president, sometimes you have to make a decision in the span of seconds and very crucial decisions at that. You don't have time to take a poll or run it by a focus group. It has to be a decision that is based not on what the world thinks or even the American public thinks, but what you know is correct at the moment. George W. Bush, for all of his perceived faults, was a decision-maker. The world may not have liked his decisions, he may have had terrible poll numbers, But he'd make a decision and he stuck to it. Will Obama do that? Will he make a decision based upon what he knows is correct and stick with it even as he watches the public that now fawns all over him begin to call him every rotten name in the book? We simply don't know.

Perhaps Barack Obama will end up being the wisest decision maker that has ever sat in the Oval Office. If he does, it will be something completely new for the man. During the campaign his supporters constantly told us that experience means nothing, that Obama's greatness will transcend his lack of experience. Maybe so. But making tough decisions is a quality that goes far beyond just giving a speech or making a promise. On Tuesday the 20th he will move into uncharted water for him. He is going to be tested and tested immediately. Will he be up to the test?

I pray that he will---for our sake.