Not surprisingly, since this is the first anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration, and the special U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts has produced a result that seemed inconceivable six weeks ago, a Republican victory, many people have asked my opinion of President Obama’s performance.

I met the President four different times before he was elected, three of those times at National Urban League events. President Obama struck me as a person with virtually unlimited growth potential and tremendous intelligence and character, and I still believe he has those qualities.

At the same time, I remind myself that he had no executive experience of any significance before he secured his first executive job, being President of the United States.  I expected him to make some rookie mistakes because of his inexperience as a chief executive, and he has.

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I was struck by the parallels between a story published this past week and an event I recalled from the recent baseball Hall of Fame voting.  The story appeared in the Saturday, January 9, article in The New York Times entitled “Unions Rally to Oppose a Proposed Tax on Health Insurance.”  The event was the beginning of free agent negotiations between Marvin Miller, the lawyer for the Players’ Union, and the baseball owners in the 1970’s, an event discussed at some length this past week as commentators correctly noted that the Hall of Fame voters’ decision to deny Miller admission is a grave injustice.

What do these two situations have in common?  In both cases, a party to a dispute values continuation of the status quo and control more than they do economic benefit.

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I am going to make some end-of-the-year observations about the way I see the political system, the economy, and our society evolving.

Many elected officials do not have the political will to address fundamental structural economic and political issues.  We built an economy after World War II promising middle class wages for all Americans, but without the foundation of skills and educational capabilities to make such promises sustainable.  Public sector labor unions and unions in heavily politicized private sector industries like the automobile industry, successfully negotiated collective bargaining agreements allowing people with very low skills and educational attainment to secure middle class wages and benefits, and protections against downsizings, even as our economy has had to become more globally competitive.

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Although I usually post a blog on a public policy issue, this end-of-the-year blog will be a combination of personal, public policy, and business observations. The one thing I can say with certainty is that 2009 evolved in a very different way from what I expected when I stepped down from the Executive Chairman position at Pitney Bowes a year ago.

The only thing that happened as I anticipated was that I would disengage emotionally from Pitney Bowes very rapidly, because that is who I am.  Once I leave an organization, I leave with fond memories, great friendships, and insights of lifelong value, but I leave the organizational responsibilities completely behind.  I am not a person who is nostalgic about what I once had or did, and this was no exception.  Other than that, everything that happened was either a surprise or a disappointment.

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In the Monday, November 23, Wall Street Journal , reporter Melinda Beck recounts a number of our successes in improving public health in an article entitled “20 Advances to be Thankful For.” Among the advances she highlights are:

• The fact that we had the same number of traffic fatalities in 2008 as we had in 1961, which is remarkable considering the significant increase in the driving population, the number of cars on the road, and the number of miles driven;
• The 50% decline in trans fats in packaged foods since 2006;
• The fact that 71% of our population lives under either a state or local ban on smoking in workplaces and/or restaurants and bars; and
• The fact that the percentage of secondary school that no longer sell soda, candy, or high-fat snacks have each risen to 64%.

I zeroed in on this article for two reasons:

• It reminds us that we are doing many things well as a society, even though the media often choose to focus on things that are going wrong.
• More importantly, there are multiple success stories from which we can learn how to improve overall population health.  Government intervention was a factor in every one of these cases, but it was not the only factor.  There were many forces, including private sector advocacy groups, that influenced human behavior for the better.

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In the Saturday November 21 New York Post, reporter Michelle Malkin writes a scathing op-ed piece on the Service Employees International Union,  entitled “The Union That Hates the Boy Scouts.“.  The major point of her piece is that the SEIU strongly opposes volunteer work in many communities, because they believe that volunteer work takes paid work away from union members.

Her description of certain union positions rings true to me because I recall that the Stamford Youth Foundation (Stamford, Connecticut) could not staff the variety and volume of after-school activities that it would have liked because union contracts required it to pay every teacher for the extra hours worked after the regular school day.  This deeply bothers me.

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This has been a most interesting week for me, especially the first two days I spent in Los Angeles with my older son in meetings relating to three investments in performing arts projects: a small commercial independent film called Fog Warning, (a trailer is viewable on YouTube), a reality TV production company called LongStoryShort Productions, and a film script on which my son Mike and I are working together.  From these meetings on all three investments, as well as other conversations I have had with many people in the performing arts business, I have learned about the challenges artists have with agents, distributors, or other intermediaries.

In the recording industry, the intermediary is the record label.  In movies, screenwriters have to approach producers through agents, and film producers have to reach the marketplace through sales agents or distributors.  TV producers have to go through agents to reach TV networks and other content buyers.  This is similar to what I experienced and saw in the broader business world: there are always gatekeepers between product and service producers and the end customer.

What is great about the Internet is how it has the potential to give those who want to reach a customer the ability to bypass intermediaries and create a better balance of power with those intermediaries.  I love the fact that Paranormal Activity, a movie produced for $15,000, which used predominantly low-cost direct marketing channels, including social media, has grossed over $100 million since its release. Too many intermediaries would be threatened if that became the norm on how to get a movie to the public.

Related to this, I was so happy when my younger son became a very capable online seller during his senior year of high school, and my daughter learned about to get harp performing engagements directly without needing a booking agent.

I believe strongly that we will see far more prosperity and a more equal distribution of income and wealth if individuals have the skills to sell their products, services, and labor directly to those who need them.  Intermediaries can serve a very valuable role, and many are essential to the people they serve.  However, just like any monopoly situation, when they have sole or primary access to the end customer, they can get complacent and not do the best possible for the seller.  That’s why I like the potential direct marketing opportunities the Internet provides.  It gives any seller, including me, the ability to say to an intermediary: “Either be as passionate and single-minded about what I am selling as I am, or get out of the way.”

In the October 21, Wall Street Journal, there was an article entitled “Japan Post Goes in New Direction.” Reporters Atsuko Fukase and Allison Tudor reported on a change in leadership and the potential reversal of the government’s commitment to privatization.  As they described the unfolding situation, they cite a statement from the chairman of the Japanese Bankers Association, who stated that he believed that private banks would face unfair competition from a government-owned Japan Post that offers banking services.

If this sounds like the concern expressed about the “public option” U.S. health insurance reform proposal, there is a good reason: the issues are remarkably similar.  In the U.S., the U.S. Postal Service has largely avoided competition with the private sector, except in the area of package delivery, in which it competes with UPS and FedEx, express mail, in which it also competes with these same companies, and international mail, in which it competes with DHL, and, more recently, Pitney Bowes.

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As I have thought about how to change human behavior to get people to do healthier things, I remember the 1984 movie The Karate Kid. In that movie, the lead character, Daniel LaRusso, played by Ralph Macchio, finds a master teacher, Mr. Miyagi, played by Pat Morita.  He believes that he is going to receive conventional instruction on how to be a karate black belt.  Instead, he gets assigned one chore after another, such as painting fences and waxing cars.  It is only after he is doing these chores for a while that he realizes that each task is also serving to strengthen him for karate.  He develops his capabilities while doing something else.

I believe that the only way we will change societal behaviors and get people to do things which make them healthier is to make healthy activity unconscious and fun.  For example, on the web site Thefuntheory.com, there is a video which shows the building, installation, and use of a stairway adjacent to an escalator in what appears to be a Swedish train station.  Because each step in the stairway looks like a big piano key and each one sounds a note as someone steps on it, the result is that stairway usage increases by 66%.

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A lot has been written about Ken Lewis, the Bank of America CEO, since he announced his decision to retire the week of September 28. Many of the commentaries on him were highly critical, including one included in the Sunday, October 3, New York Times business section by Joe Nocera entitled “Incompetent? No, Just Not a Leader.” Nocera contrasted Lewis, whom I succeeded as Chairman of the National Urban League Board of Trustees in 2002, and who was an exceptionally capable chairman, with his precedessor at the Bank of America, Hugh McColl, whom he described as “born to be a leader.”  I disagree fundamentally with the “born leader” theory.

Every leader does some things very well, and other things less well.  Whether he or she succeeds depends on two factors:

• How well do the capabilities required for a leadership position match the leader’s capabilities?
• How well did the leader either adapt or complement his or her capabilities in areas in which he or she was deficient?

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