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“Let the word go forth to friend and foe alike that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans …”
So spoke the nation’s 35th President, John F. Kennedy, during his inaugural address in January 1961.
In January 2009, the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, will likely start his inaugural speech with something similar: “Let history books record that 2009 was the first time in 40 years that the collective wisdom of the American electorate ushered in an era of genuine wisdom and much needed change in the direction of our nation, both here at home and abroad.”
Of course, he cannot very well bad mouth his predecessors in his very first speech to the nation as President. So, let me do it for him!
The fact is, since the assassination of John F. Kennedy on that awful November day in 1963 in Dallas, this nation has been served by Presidents whose vision for a truly enlightened superpower and world leader have left much to be desired.
Lyndon Johnson’s notable and historic achievements in civil rights aside, his disastrous escalation of the Vietnam war (sadly forced on him by the lies and deceit of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) created a national trauma in this country and destroyed another historically peaceful country.
Richard Nixon should first and foremost be remembered and praised for opening up communist China (look at the results today), but the Watergate scandal trumped that one, and perhaps rightly so, for Nixon was attempting nothing less than hijacking this country’s democracy – see anything familiar today?
Gerald Ford was president for only two years – two uninspiring and colorless years at that. His most notable (and correct, I believe) act was to pardon Nixon. By the end of Ford’s presidency, the nation had just about had it with the corruption of Republicans and sought change - see anything familiar today? They thought they had found it in the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia.
Jimmy Carter would later become the best ex-President this nation ever had, but, as the nation’s 39th President, he moved too fast on human rights issues, “lost Iran,” and got himself marred in the Iran hostage crisis. His valiant and humane efforts to resolve the crisis peacefully and honorably was thwarted by the infamous, calculated October Surprise scandal which cost him re-election, duping the nation to vote for his successor. But Carter did bring home the hostages safely for which he never got the credit due. For some, it was not macho enough to actually get live hostages back or to not actually start a war somewhere!
We then had eight years of sleepwalking through history in the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. I still don’t understand why people made such a big deal out of Ronald Reagan, unless, of course, you think like the military. His most popular act was to invade Granada (you know, that huge country in the Caribbean which was a clear and present danger to the entire Western hemisphere) and to drop a few bombs on Muammar Kaddafi’s tent outside Tripoli. Also, his supporters (especially in the military, who were enjoying record budgets) were openly elated when the Navy’s Vincennes shot down the Iran Air passenger jet over the Persian Gulf in 1988. Reagan sent Vice President George Bush (and not the US Ambassador) to the United Nations to defend the action. You see, Bush was running for President at the time and there was no way he was going to pass up this chance for promoting his candidacy on the world stage. Nobody told him that it’s a bad idea to keep looking at his watch impatiently while the UN Security Council was hearing about the decimation of 258 innocent passengers.
As President, George Bush the Elder was, predictably, a one-term President, given his consistently short tenure in all the real jobs he held. Yet he managed to squeeze in two wars in just four years. The first war was the invasion of Panama, in which at least 3,000 civilians were killed in the cross-fire, just to oust a documented drug dealer by the name of Manuel Noriega who was also reportedly a CIA agent for 20 years!
The second war was, of course, the first Gulf War for the “liberation” of Kuwait. No one has yet explained to us why Saddam Hussein went into Kuwait in the first place and what or who made him think he could get away with invading such an oil rich country. What we do know is that the Kuwait and southern Iraq War Theaters became the perfect area for target practice and for testing the latest weapons in the US arsenal. The military was given a free hand and we witnessed the last chapter of the Vietnam War as Americans poured affection on returning GI’s – a far cry from the days of Vietnam when many of the same people had spat on GI’s, called them "baby killers," and roughed them up at ports and train stations.
Bush 41 made two mistakes. First, he forgot that “It’s the Economy, Stupid” and lost his bid for re-election. Second, he had let loose in Kuwait former Vietnam vet General “Storming Norman” Schwarzkopf who killed so many Iraqi soldiers trapped in their underground bunkers in the open desert that to this day he will not tell us how many. “A very large number” is as far as he’ll go. But I expect that the insurgents in Iraq today know (and remember) the actual numbers. Does Bush 43 know?
Bill Clinton did not take this nation to war and managed to produce one of the best economic recoveries ever and respect for America in much of the world. Then along came Monica Lewinsky, propelling character to the forefront of the national stage. No need to rehash that one.
Nor is there a need to rehash the Presidency of Bush 43, perhaps the most disastrous of all time. It’s an eternal mystery how such a rich and talented nation can end up electing (and worse, re-electing) such non-entities with such track records.
It is against this backdrop of decades of presidential excesses, incompetence, narrow vision, and arrogance that The People have wised up. It is time to retire war mongers and the products of the old establishment. John McCain and Hillary Clinton don’t fit the bill of the future. Barack Obama is the only candidate who is likely to be a true reformer. He’ll come into the presidency with a unique mandate, from vast numbers of both white and black Americans. It remains to be seen how much he’ll be able to resist the ever present, self-serving vultures in the corridors of power, reverse the recent hijacking of this country’s democracy, and let this country be once again the true, respected leader of the free world.
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