Just shut up!

In the business world, naysaying doesn't play. Most of us have experiences with co-workers and management that do nothing but complain and look for every reason not to do something, or why an idea is bad, all the while not offering alternative ideas of their own. It's one of the biggest pet peeves of successful and motivated business people. Likewise, when a decision is made by management it is expected that all hands on board will do what's required to execute on that decision, regardless if all parties agreed on the decision to begin with. Can you imagine any large company working any differently? Nothing would ever get accomplished.

Of course there's room for disagreement and discourse. But once arguments have been held and considered, a decision is made and the plan must be put into motion and brought to it's successful completion.

Further, to be successful in making your argument, you never, ever humiliate or overtly criticize those you need to persuade.

The likes of Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California), Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada), John Kerry (Democrat, Massachusetts) and Edward M Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusetts) have not likely had to experience business politics and diplomacy as all four are life long politicians. This could probably be said of our elected servants from all parties, but this fact is most evident when their over the top stumping is brought to bare in clearly inappropriate situations.

Such was the case yesterday and today with the aforementioned elected representatives, all lifelong politicians, spoke out in two-faced defiance of the historical Iraqi elections over the weekend. It really isn't a surprise, as their hypocrisy has been clear for years. Their antics are simply disappointing. Most repugnant of all is Kennedy's claim that the United States is not the solution, but the problem in the war against terrorism in reference to our current efforts in Iraq.

None of these Congressmen have proposed substantive alternative solutions. Kennedy's demand for a time table has been debunked by every credible military and diplomatic expert, as well as members of his own party. None of these congressmen have offered constructive solutions on a go-forward basis.

Instead, this so-called Democratic leadership wants to wallow in the past with claims of Administration and Republican deception in the war against terror and the war against Iraq. If the majority of American people can accept in hindsight that our Intelligence was poor and that the best decision was made based on what we knew at the time, why can't they? And even if they can't see it this way, isn't it reasonable to think that the best thing for our country and their constituancies is to focus on moving things (as there are a lot of things to work on) forward?

We would expect and demand as much from our co-workers and management in our workplaces. Why should we settle for less in our elected officials. Unfortunately our elected official's MBO's are focused on re-election and manufacturing pork for their financial backers and special interest groups rather than any sort altruism.

The electorate get to do our elected official's performance reviews every few years. But it seems to me that some of the people of our fine country are absentee managers.

Most of these congressmen belong to numerous subcommittees where it is appropriate to make their views clear and debate the issues. All too often, as we saw with John Edwards, they don't attend these meetings. And as we witnessed with the recent confirmation hearings, these meetins are much less constructive than they are political. There is a time and place to debate, battle, and get real work done. And sometimes, as with this last weekend, some of these officials need to just shut up.