Hail To The Chief! - Millennial Money with Cliff Mason

BIO

Cliff Mason is the author of Millennial Money. He is the Senior Writer of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer, and has been that program's primary writer, in cooperation with and under the supervision of Jim Cramer, since he began at CNBC as an intern during the summer of 2005. Mason was the author of a column at TheStreet.com during 2007, which he describes as "hilarious, if short-lived." He graduated from Harvard College in 2007. It was at Harvard that Mason learned to multi-task, mastering the art of seeming to pay attention to professors while writing scripts for Mad Money. Mason has co-written two books with Jim Cramer: Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich and Stay Mad For Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer). He is 100% responsible for any parts of either book that you did not like. Mason has also had a fruitful relationship with Jim Cramer as his nephew for the last 23 years and will hopefully continue to hold that position for many more as long as he doesn't do anything to get himself kicked out of the family.

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Jan.20

10:56 AM ET

Tuesday, 20 Jan 2009

Hail To The Chief!

Posted By:Cliff Mason

Topics:Politics & Government | Barack Obama | George W. Bush | Stock Market

President Barack Obama
AP
President Barack Obama
After eight years of W, the nation is simply thrilled that the government will finally work again.

We don't like to think about it, but America is pretty much an elective monarchy. The executive branch has so much latitude when it comes to taking "care that the laws be faithfully executed," that we might as well call the guy at the top the term-limited King of the United States.

People are hopeful about Obama not because of his soaring rhetoric, but because it seems like he's approaching the job as a President rather than an autocrat.

He shows every sign of actually wanting to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," a line I keep lifting from our constitution. Obama likes to talk about getting people more engaged with the political process, but if he's successful as President then we'll all become less engaged, courtesy of the fact that our country is now being ruled by adults.

Before I was born, a guy named Reagan said "the government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem." He meant that the Federal government had grown too big and unwieldy. But for the last eight years, the government has been the problem in a different kind of way: the executive branch wasn't doing its darned job.

And I'm not even talking about FEMA's, "heckuva job, Brownie," disastrous response to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, or the botched invasion of Iraq.

I mean smaller things, like the Interior Department giving timber companies free reign to cut down the trees it's supposed to be protecting. Like the Labor Department doing its best not to enforce our labor laws. Or an Environmental Protection Agency that BLOCKS states from regulating greenhouse gas emissions that come from new cars and trucks. The EPA under Bush has been especially ridiculous, with multiple lawsuits coming from states, one of which went all the way to the Supreme Court, to get the ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY to regulate greenhouse gases. The EPA, of course, did its best to not comply with that ruling.

I don't know if the last eight years have been tragedy or farce, probably both.

But I do know the Bush years have made my generation politically aware. I think the greatest hope President Obama brings is the prospect that we won't have to worry so much about politics anymore, or at least that we won't have to fret because the executive branch agencies are no longer being run by knuckleheads.

Now that's the audacity of hope.