I haven’t had the pleasure (?) of moving into a foreclosed property, but I have moved into a house that didn’t have all the personal touches my family desired. I’m assuming the damage many foreclosed properties have, at the time of purchase, would force the new owner into renovation mode immediately. Having acknowledged the need for fixing/change, the first step should be the easiest: look around to assess what needs to be changed, what the owner wants to change and decide how to go about completing the project. At this point, it would be unreasonable to do everything at once. As a matter of fact, doing everything at once would bring about more chaos and would make it difficult to control the budget for each project. Raise your hand if you’ve ever completed a project at home and the costs were (way) more than you anticipated. Yeah, I knew I wasn’t the only one.

You know where this is going right?

How can President Obama, or the head of any organization for that matter, take control and expect to fix everything at once? The short/quick answer is you can’t and newsflash, trying to do so in America isn’t going so well currently, but things could change. We can go around and around about political parties, but at some point it would be wise to at least consider whether or not the Republicans’ negative comments towards Obama have turned from party hate to reality.

Taking on the recession, the health care system and a new energy problem all at once could turn out to be President Obama’s fatal flaw. For the record, I want to see him succeed, but just because I want it doesn’t mean I’m going to look past some mis-steps along the way. It might have been a better idea to go one at a time and finish, or establish, each “project” the same as you would a renovation project in a house. This isn’t Extreme Government Makeover so an amazing renovation cannot be completed in (7 days on the TV show) 6 months. If you are keeping track of the clock, we are 12.5% through the Obama administration leaving 87.5% on the clock – half way through with the first quarter.

Colin Powell, someone who has my utmost respect, feels the same way. “I think one of the cautions that has to be given to the president — and I’ve talked to some of his people about this — is that you can’t have so many things on the table that you can’t absorb it all. And we can’t pay for it all,” Powell said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Let’s not forget, Powell was one of the key players in the strategic planning of Desert Storm and served as Secretary of State during Bush’s first term. Powell also saw something wrong with the way Bush was running the country and had no problem leaving the Bush administration – purely my opinion. Some will say Powell left because he mis-represented himself, AKA lied, some will say Bush kind of fired him and others will look at it my way. But looking at his entire history, I would say he smelled something stinking, threw up the peace sign and left!

To be fair, here is a comment from someone calling themselves “Ohio Citizen” concerning this subject: “Powell is hedging. I think the President will triumph when the economy turns, and it will certainly turn. The thing President Obama has is the audacity to actually tackle some of the fundamental weaknesses that have kept us in the boom and bust cycle. I look forward to reading the talking points of conservatives and republicans in 2011 and 2012. I suppose they will find a way to give themselves credit for our prosperity even though they are predicting gloom and doom. America is great and we have a great President leading us with courage and foresight, Powell’s coldfeet not withstanding.”

The whole thing could boil down to making one of two choices: current spending or current unemployment, health care, etc. President Obama (obviously) isn’t worried about current spending and that has many people, including most Republicans, worried about the future of our country. To those people – I may actually be one of them – I ask, could we continue to do the same things we were doing and expect different results? I admit, I wouldn’t want to tackle so many tough projects at once, but if the house is falling down around you, you have to do something more than just fix the front door.