A Need for Self-Made Leaders, not Derivative Leaders

A NEED FOR SELF-MADE LEADERS, NOT DERIVATIVE LEADERS -- (House of Representatives - May 09, 2006)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I have been asking myself why the President of the United States really can't get a grip on policies that would help America become energy independent here at home. Last week, as we were looking at rising gasoline prices all across our country, he suggested that we import, import more ethanol.

I thought about that comment and his whole administration's lack of attention to energy independence for our country, and I sort of sat there at my desk and thought, why would the President behave this way? And I thought a lot about how we form our personalities and when we take whatever occupation we get into as adults, why we behave the way we do.

There are some personalities that result from experiences that make you self-made, and then there are those personalities that I call derivative personalities, and their behaviors result from a different set of experiences, so when they get in a job they really can't command and direct, because they have never really done it themselves.

Here is an example. I grew up in a family where our mother made our clothing. We didn't have a lot of money, so we learned how to scrimp, and we learned how to invent and to create. And those are learned skills.

The President grew up in a family that was extraordinarily wealthy. I would guess that they bought most of their clothes. In fact, I can remember when the President, his father, didn't even know how much socks cost in the store during one of his Presidential races. They always bought everything. They never made. They had enough assets, he inherited enough, that they really didn't have to learn how to be self-made. So he doesn't have a mind that lends itself to creativity necessarily.

We came from a family where we ran our own small business. Our dad made his own products. We made our own sausages, our own meatloafs, our own pickles. Dad had to do everything himself. He had to figure out how to finance his business.

We have a President who inherited his wealth. Everything that he did, he had this soft landing pad. He failed a number of times in businesses that he inherited from his own family, but he never really paid the consequences, because someone was always there to catch him and to refinance him, even in the purchase of the baseball team that he owned, which then he eventually sold and used those dollars to get elected President of the United States. Most American families don't have that kind of landing pad.

In our family, we had to earn our way to go to college, and we had to get good grades, because there was nobody there that was going to save you. Nobody in our family had ever gone to college before. I had to keep good grades to keep a scholarship up for the scholarship I did receive.

But the President's education was paid for by his family. In fact, he was admitted to schools, based on his grades, that most Americans could never get admitted to.

I think what these kinds of experiences do is create a different kind of personality, a personality of people who are self-made and they know how to create, versus a personality that is more derivative and sometimes can't solve problems, and they look to someone else to solve them.

So if we have an energy problem in America, the President would look to somebody else. And he says, well, let's import the ethanol. He doesn't really think about creating a whole new industry here at home and using the Government of the United States to help create that industry.

That is why he has proposed cutting programs. At the same time out of one side of his mouth he talks about energy addiction, but then is trying to use the Government of the United States to create a new energy future for America. He really doesn't know what to do with it when he is in command of it.

It was actually Congress that adopted the first energy title to a farm bill. It didn't come from the administration. And if you look at every single budget that he has offered, he talks about energy independence, and then he cuts the programs that would lead us in that direction.

What America really needs is a new biofuels industry as a complement to other forms of power that we can create. But we need self-made people to help move America in that direction. Many of our farmers are figuring it out. We need programs to help them finance the development of the new infrastructure and the production facilities that are necessary to green up this industry. They need the President's help to do it so they are not bought out by Big Oil and by companies that really don't want them to bring up this new industry. But the President really doesn't know how to create it. His Secretary of Agriculture isn't doing it.

We could have programs like title IX in USDA funded at $1 billion. We struggle to even get $25 million or $23 million in our committee, which is laughable in terms of a trade deficit in oil of over $60 billion and counting.

The President's Cabinet members are not energy-focused. The Secretary of Defense said energy isn't his job. He runs the largest instrument in this country that uses fuel, and energy independence isn't his job? He said that to us in committee.

Mr. Speaker, we need people in our country and the Presidency and this Congress who are self-made, not derivative, to lead America to a new independent energy age.

http://thomas.loc.gov