I&#x27;m with the president on this. Sure wish he&#x27;d actually do something, though.<p>As an example of what he could do, there are a few folks from both parties who share agreement that the prison system needs reform. It wouldn&#x27;t have been too difficult to have co-wrote this piece with them. Heck, then at the end we could have read about the actual legislation sponsored, instead of him just hoping somebody, somewhere will send some to him.<p>Perhaps this president has a different idea of his job than I do. He seems very interested in pretending to be outside the system, dispassionately analyzing it, announcing where we&#x27;ve all failed and where we might do better.<p>This is a great skill for a candidate, and it&#x27;ll probably serve him well after he leaves the job, but right now? Might be better to do less preaching and a little more compromising. Perhaps I&#x27;m being too tough on him. Don&#x27;t know. Apologies if that&#x27;s the case. I do note that observers from both parties have described him as being distant and disengaged.<p>This reminds me of the question researchers asked many years ago. Doctor A comes in and takes his time with you, he&#x27;s polite and interested. Doctor B is gruff and rushed, doing only as little as he thinks necessary to get the work done. Which is the better doctor?<p>The answer is, of course, you don&#x27;t know. Without seeing results, all you can really comment on is style. Ideally you&#x27;d want a doctor that had both technical and interpersonal competence. But without taking a hard look at what kinds of results occur, all a layman can do is comment on the stylistic nature of what they&#x27;ve observed.<p>So it is here. This is a very-well written piece. My intent here is not to criticize the president or play politics, simply to point out that the tech community has a <i>lot</i> of issues we care about, no matter what our party is. And there are a ton of folks who can make a good case for one thing or another. It&#x27;s important that we sort out folks who can make a great speech but get little done from those who might not be able to put seven words together -- and could actually implement the changes we have to have.