The Presidential Race is Sealed... but there are some concerns..

This post is late and was meant to be out right after the final presidential debate. It was a gallant effort by Senator McCain to save his sinking presidential bid but unfortunately, he has been outplayed and conducted too many strategic errors.

The Obama campaign engine was too formidable to beat. It utilised a populist movement otherwise known as 'grassroot' action to catalyse the political momentum, plus it was an powerful electoral campaign funding generator. It commits people to acting on their choice in every conceivable means and it only makes them an even more staunch defender of their political choice.

The McCain campaign was flawed from the start, right from the point of selecting who he wants as a VP on his presidential ticket. Choosing to capitalise on the relating to regular people in hopes that regular people would like a regular VP was a bad choice. At the end of the day, as much as people want their leaders to be able to emphatise and relate to, they want their leaders to be capable and competent to lead. Colin Powell who has now endorsed Obama would have been a much better choice. Plus, he ignored the signs. The economy has been flagging all this while and it was inconceivable that he did not see it coming. Maybe it was a strategic decision to avoid such a difficult issue but like common saying goes, "You've got to face the music" eventually. Hence, the whole initiative was lost and the strategy of the campaign was just purely tactical discrediting of the opponent.

I'm not an American and I have no political affliation and hence I consider myself to be pretty bipartisan. It is therefore in my humble opinion that the race is sealed. We can be certain of a Obama victory.

My bigger question however is, "What's next?" From the onset, I have always believed that it was a choice between the lesser of two (evils). Both did not have a clear plan to save the declining economy.

I have however some deep reservations of Senator Obama for several reasons. Firstly, was his extremely misleading and protectionist showing. In the third debate, he gave an example of contrasting cars sales of U.S. cars in South Korea and Korean cars in the U.S. Because America was unable to sell more cars to South Korea as compared to the the sales in the other direction, he asserts that it was not 'fair' trade and wanted to fix that. Also, he reiterated the policies of punishing U.S. companies for 'shipping jobs overseas' and incentivise companies keeping jobs in America.

The problem of that argument is that it is flawed on several counts. The reason for the trade imbalance was not due to trade protectionism nor dumping by the Koreans. It's just simply because Hyundais are selling better than Fords (I own Ford stock by the way, sadly. But I believe in Mullaly), beating them in price, design, fuel consumption and just every other sales inducing metric. American cars are stuck being nowhere because they cannot compete on the lower end which is dominated by the Japanese and Koreans and yet they are outclassed on the high ends by the BMWs and Mercedes. The U.S. automobile industry therefore needs to pull up their socks and regain some innovative ability to sell cars and if not they will certainly face the reality of failure. Protectionism won't save it.

The same argument holds true when you create policy restrictions to prevent firms from finding the most cost effective means to conduct business. The real solution is really to bump up education and push for job retraining to shift your workforce to niche areas areas that developing nations are not able to compete and take your jobs. Over protection of trade unions are also extremely harmful for businesses and eventually hurt the unions themselves when companies shut down. I might be biased but I have seen how limiting these unions and being pro-business have benefited by country. Basically, protectionism destroys the spirit of enterprise.

The second problem I find is the liberal use of money. Sure, throwing money (especially obscene amounts) can often get the job done. Unfortunately, it is something that the U.S. government needs to conserve more of. The details of the U.S. Federal programmes really needs to be looked into so that they can get more bang for their buck. Cost cutting by centralising certain redundant functions across state departments, instituitionalising cost effectiveness programmes, etc. So sure, use a scapel and make the incisions but please bring the sucking tubes because this is a liposuction that we're doing here. I know I make it sound easy here but what I am proposing is not THE solution because there isn't such a thing as a pancea. All this means is simple to take a step in the right direction and to adopt an adaptive management of government programmes that would continually calibrate itself on KPIs that measure effectiveness.

Last but not least, taxes. I think redistribution of wealth always goes down well with the people and gets you elected, but I think at the end of the day, if you can lower taxes overall it will be even better. More importantly, you want to make sure that your taxes are favourable for businesses. They pull in FDIs, create jobs and of course their prosperity adds to the tax coffers. Taxes of course are important because they pay for your programmes so unless you apply point 2 above, you cannot work on this.

Interestingly, there is a trick or two which Obama can take from the McCain play book (pro-business ideas) and should remember that it's not big government but rather good governance that the U.S. needs.