So things aren’t going so well for the current administration: the Fast and Furious mess, gas prices climbing, etc. etc. So what does a top-notch leader do when his policies and efforts that he pushes have issues? Take ownership and work a remediation plan? Well, let’s check out what President Obama did and you make the call:

American Public Media: With all respect, it was a gutsy move I think to come to a solar facility. Your administration has staked a lot on clean technology, green jobs – the biggest item most people know about that strategy is, of course, a company named Solyndra, which your administration gave loan guarantees to, then went bankrupt and has been the subject of many investigations. Are you doing your ‘all of the above’ strategy right if that’s what we have to show for it, Solyndra?

President Obama: We are doing the all of the above strategy right. Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn’t gone bankrupt. Part of the reason they did was because the Chinese were subsidizing their solar industry and flooding the market in ways that Solyndra couldn’t compete. But understand, this was not our program per se.

Congress–Democrats and Republicans–put together a loan guarantee program because they understood historically that when you get new industries–it’s easy to raise money for start-ups, but if you want to take them to scale sometimes there’s a lot of risk involved, and what the loan guarantee program was designed to do was to help start-up companies get to scale. And the understanding is that some companies are not going to succeed, some companies are going to do very well, but the portfolio as a whole ends up supporting the kind of innovation that helps make America successful in this innovative 21st century economy. Do I wish that Solyndra had gone bankrupt? Absolutely not. And obviously it’s heartbreaking it happened for the workers who were there.

Wait a minute. “This was not our program per se” and “Congress – Democrats and Republicans – put together a loan program…” Well, this isn’t much of a surprise as the President has tried passing on ownership of this issue before. In a briefing on October 6th, 2011, President Obama said, “Solyndra — this is a loan guarantee program that predates me that historically has had support from Democrats and Republicans as well.”
The price of greatness is responsibility.
– Winston Churchill
So when his policies fail, he dodges the issue.  Is that the mark of a great leader? 

President Obama is being inaccurate in these statements.  The fact is that the $535M loan program was part of §1705 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which was amended to the 2005 act by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  From FactCheck.org:

In a March 2009 press release announcing a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, the Energy Department said: “This loan guarantee will be supported through the President’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provides tens of billions of dollars in loan guarantee authority to build a new green energy economy.” Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman, confirmed that Solyndra’s funding came solely from section 1705.
The last time I checked Republicans were by and large against the ARRA  (a/k/a Stimulus) and 2009 was the first year of President Obama’s term.   So neither the “support from Democrats and Republicans” nor the  “program that predates me” is correct.

This is simple political cowardice and the President should be reminded that we’re in the age of recordable media where what he and his administration’s officials say and write are recorded for posterity.  He would have been better served to own up and take the heat for it….unless, of course, there are questionable ties between Solyndra and this administration.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.