kms

Preemptive Maintenance

April 29, 2014

Our 1998 Subaru Forester turned over 170,000 last week. Coincidentally, our local Subaru dealer had a coupon for a free multi-point inspection, so I took the car in for the inspection and got a list of quotes for all of the little non-essential things that would be nice to get fixed.

Barack Obama gave a speech today on the not so “sexy” things that the administration is taking care of on the foreign policy front. He went on to say, “You hit singles, you [hit] doubles and occasionally, you may be able to hit some home runs”. He’s been criticized for this analogy, as it lends itself to suggesting that he’s not aiming for home runs.

I don’t take offense to the work being done, but rather the metaphor. Perhaps a better analogy would have been getting an oil change, or painting over the rust on your car: If you don’t do it, things will get worse, and you’ll have a bigger price to pay down the road.