There are successful strategies for financially good times and successful strategies for financially bad times. There are few financial strategies that work equally well in both good and bad times. That is what President Obama and his economic experts don’t seem to understand.

For example, just about every American you talk to at a shopping mall would agree that universal health care of some type is a worthy goal. But when your family’s stock portfolio has withered to half the value it had just two years ago and the value of your house has dropped by thirty percent and is still dropping, and it appears that any day now you may loose your job due to down-sizing, is this really the ideal time to heap new medical costs upon the backs of hard working citizens who daily grow poorer and poorer?

In good times it isn’t out of line to ask those who’ve prospered in our system to give back to the less fortunate and to agree to have their taxes raised. But in times of economic fear, paralysis and devastation, when people have little or no discretionary income, is this a good time to raise their taxes and increase their cost of living?

Of course we all know how the nation stumbled into this financial cesspool. In case you missed it, every day President Obama and his aides spell it out to remind us. That is, “It’s all President Bush’s fault. He did this to us and because of him years of economic suffering lie ahead.”

This reminds me of the quarterback who has sat on the bench for three quarters and who finally is sent in to win the game. But instead of leading the team down the field in a winning drive, he whines in the huddle that it was the starting quarterback that got them into this losing situation and that it is unreasonable for everyone to expect him to fix things and win the game for them in the little time left. Neither the coach, team nor the fans would tolerate such a defeatist attitude and dismal lack of vision and leadership. The quarterback would be yanked, benched and traded.

Well, economically the going’s gotten tough and it’s time for the tough to get going. It’s time for President Obama to start acting like a winning quarterback. After he leads us to an economic win in the fourth quarter, he can then take time to finger point and to document how bad the Bush Administration really was and how they failed us and how he, President Obama, really inherited a difficult situation. Now is not the time for Monday morning quarterbacking.

Democrat Jim Cramer, radio host and commentator, in a March 5, 2009 article titled My Response To The White House says this:  “Obama has undeniably made things worse by creating an atmosphere of fear and panic rather than an atmosphere of calm and hope. He’s done it by pushing a huge amount of change at a very perilous moment, by seeking to demonize the entire banking system and by raising taxes for those making more than $250,000 at the exact time when we need them to spend and build new businesses, and by revoking deductions for funds to charity.”

How could anyone believe that we help our middle class families by using their tax money to pay tax refunds to people who have never paid taxes? How does this work? Someone lives tax free for years and then some of the tax money that they never paid to the government is rebated to them? Is the new Administration playing Robin Hood, or is this just plain old highway robbery? 

Let me conclude with again using Jim Cramer’s words. We are, “Raising taxes on the eve of what could be a second Great Depression, destroying the profits in healthcare companies (one of the few areas still robust in the economy), tinkering with the mortgage deduction at a time when U.S. house price depreciation is behind much of the world’s morass and certainly the devastation affecting our banks, and pushing an aggressive cap and trade program that could raise the price of energy for millions of people.”

Isn’t it time we got serious? If President Obama won’t, then the U.S. Congress should. If the U.S. Congress won’t then the loyal opposition, the Republicans, must. But we’re in the fourth quarter now and it would be a much better game plan, if President Obama came off the bench demonstrating optimistic, wise leadership and led the nation to economic victory.