An Issue of Trust

I feel like I have talked about Alberto Gonzales more than enough, but, really, it is just that Alberto Gonzales is the symbolic tip of the iceberg. This scandal just serves as the facade for a much bigger problem with the administration. The nation as a whole, as is apparent to anyone with half a brain, does not trust Alberto Gonzales, but Bush stands by him. OK, fine, he does not get the message the first time around. A lot of people don't understand the severity of their problems when they are first warned, a problem that seems to be compounded when the aforementioned "warned" is a politician. So the opposition decides to show him exactly why Alberto Gonzales needs to be removed from office. Any president who has any thought as to the wishes of his people would heed a Congressional vote of no confidence in one of his cabinet members. But wait, do you remember? We gave Bush free rein in November of 2004 to do anything, and, apparently, anything, that he wants. So anyone who stands against him is simply engaging in "pure political theater." I know that Alberto Gonzales's job, as attorney general to a wildly unpopular, lame duck president, is largely devoid of all value. However, Americans place a great deal of symbolic value in the office of the man whose job it is to protect their rights, not sign off on the President's repeated and varied violation of those rights. Please, Mr. President, give them someone in that office for them to trust.

Qualifications

There is nothing worse than a lying politician. Wait, yes there is. A politician who can't even come up with lies to defend himself is worse than a lying politician. This occurred to me today when I was thinking about the Alberto Gonzales case. At least when President Clinton got up in front of the country he was ready to face his detractors. The fact that Attorney General Gonzales can't even come up with lies to even try and save his own position tells us two things: one, that he is not morally fit for his position, as his blatant abuse of power shows, and two, that he is not intellectually fit for his position. I mean, the whole country knows you are morally corrupt. You might as well go with it and deny, deny, deny. It's a simple cost-benefit analysis. However, the sort of nepotism that put Gonzales in his position does not pay attention to qualifications, read "Hey, running horse racing obviously prepares you to handle natural disaster management!" Regardless of the next president elected, Democrat or Republican, extreme or MOR, this needs to be an issue that the American people put on the table; the way the government is going to manage your money is not going to matter if the person doing the actual managing got the job by being a "loyal (blank)ie."

Electrifying.

I finally saw Barack Obama in person for the first time today. I was a bit nervous, going into it, as one of my friends had told me, "He's not nearly as good in person as he is on TV." However, this person is a die-hard Clinton supporter, so I thought that her views might have been skewed slightly by bias. As it turns out, they were. He was, simply put, the best speaker I have ever seen, on TV, film or in person. He delivered a magnificent soliloquy on the difference between his campaign and others, and, having volunteered for his campaign, I can tell you that he is absolutely right in this respect. His campaign is all about changing the status quo, and about real leadership. It is one thing for Senator Obama to get up on a stage and deliver a speech about that change, it is another for just about every staffer at his campaign to casually, unknowingly, slip it into everyday conversation. His entire campaign, from the head down, is about that change, and that is what is going to make the difference in this primary. Well, that and the differences between the Senators themselves.

If only...

And now for something completely different. It's good to know that at last many of the illegal immigrants in this country will have the opportunity to become, well, legal immigrants. The more hardline set of Republicans is, of course, making a stink about the whole deal. Of course, the more hardline Democrats would be making a stink about it if the issue was one that they had been elected to office on the principle of, at least in part. But that is not the real point. The point is that the Republicans, at least the more moderate ones, were willing to cooperate with the Democratic majority on at least one issue, and Bush was forced into thanking the Democrats for putting a bill that they have wanted to do so with on the fast track to lawdom (Schoolhouse Rock reference). There was no way that the US was going to be able to deport even a fraction of those affected by this bill, so the best way to go about this problem was to do it exactly the way that the Democrats, and Republicans now too, are doing it; they are getting the workers in the US under the law, and they are doing more to prevent more from getting in. If only they could cooperate this way, for the benefit of the populace, on more issues...

Family Values

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., despite having a name that might suggest otherwise to most Americans, is just about as devoid of scandal as any American politician can be. I mention this not to campaign for him, though having called several hundred people for him in the last week, I certainly am used to doing that. I mention this because there is another scandal in the White House this week. Well, this one actually doesn't come from the White House, but it is from the sector that put Bush in there. Paul Wolfowitz has taken to the trenches to defend his job as president of the World Bank, where he is under fire due to yet another scandal. The details of the scandal are not just unimportant, they are irrelevant. The important fact here is that there is another administration scandal. The American people are well and truly sick of these, both the public variety common to this president's men, and the private kind publicized by his predecessor. The moderates have had enough of the so called ethics that President Bush and his Evangelical beliefs have brought to power, which include: Firing people who have dissenting opinions, ignoring any evidence that is contrary to your position, using your influence to get your old buddies no-bid contracts, and, now, practicing nepotism when hiring for the highest paying federal jobs. Maybe that is what they mean when they talk about family values. The point is, we need a change. A major one. And we need it as soon as possible. Senator Obama not only has no public scandals; he also, seemingly, has no potential for scandal, which leads me to believe that he has no skeletons in his closet. Let's get rid of the current administrations take on family values, and bring on someone with real values, to begin.

Stand Up Guys

In all honesty, no one cares about the Alberto Gonzales case anymore. That is not to say that no one thinks it is important. I for one think that it is, and I know that it weighs heavily on the minds of many people. But at this point, everyone knows that he did a great wrong to those eight US attorneys. They know that Bush knows that. They know that Bush still stands by his supporter through all of this; after all, isn't he still a loyal Bushie? And they know that Alberto Gonzales is going to get away with what he has done, if only because the Bush administration is, at this point, utterly inconsequential. The fact that he pressured John Ashcroft, while he lay in a hospital bed, to accept the NSA's domestic spying plan, while even more damning to his public character, does nothing to change that sad fact. It does say something about how the Bush administration chooses to get things done; through intimidation and strong arm tactics, rather than through diplomacy and friendship. With policies like that, I'm just shocked that our foreign relations are in the shambles that they are (<-- sarcasm).

No Options.

"Failure is not an option" implies that we have a choice in the matter, GW, and repeating your mantra is not going to do a whole lot to change that fact. Bush has been backpedaling on the issue for years now, and the American people finally spoke their mind in November. They're tired of your auditory retreat before the press; they want an actual retreat, with real troops. Harry Reid has said that he is in a bubble, that none of the Republicans around him want to get close, to risk being tainted by the possibly career-ending, taint that is upon his entire administration and presidency at this point.

I guess that bubble is tinted as well as tainted.

Either Bush is either blind to the damage his strategy is causing his allies and party, or he is simply too tenacious to let go. Blindness is never admirable in a president; Bush was elected because he had a vision for the country. Tenacity is usually a positive trait, though that can be changed when that tenacity leads to thousands of deaths. Either way, we should have seen the problems this could cause when Bush told the country that he believed being reelected gave him free rein on the war in Iraq. It's too bad that he doesn't see that that is exactly what happened when the Democrats were put in control of Congress this year.

10 candidates and not one acceptable.

At the moment, there are a whopping 10 Republicans considering a run for the presidency, though Republicans have struck a reputation for choosing one candidate early in recent elections. There are plenty of others openly considering a run at the Oval Office, including Fred Thompson. However, they all seem to be the same kind of conservative, traditional, not the religious right zealots that put Bush in power. Pundits are saying that this is a kind of backlash against the mess that Bush has made of this country, and against the power base that allowed him to do so. There is a problem with this, though. Despite the problems with Bush, the evangelicals are still the single most powerful conservative demographic in the country, and they are not happy with their field of candidates. The current field also has one other major problem The traditional conservative government platform they are running on is based strongly upon the military and support for the military. With the Iraq War as wildly popular among moderates as it is today, that could chop off that end of the spectrum of their support. What they are left with is, well, not quite enough to put them on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Another comparison.

In a recent poll, Hillary Clinton has 38% of the Democratic constituency in hand, while Barack Obama only has 24%. This in itself is not exactly troubling. You expect some difficulties when two people are trying to reach out to Americans, one with the last name of a former President, and one with the middle name of a despot deposed recently by American forces. However, what is troubling is the reason that Hillary is pulling away. Most liberals said that they supported Clinton because of her strong position on the war in Iraq.

Let's compare.

Hillary Rodham Clinton voted in favor of the Iraq War and defended her position several times. It was only in late 2006, when it became clear that she would make a run for the White House, that she began to decry her radical anti-war position, and the bootlickers lapped up every word she spoke.

On the other hand, Senator Obama, though he did not have the opportunity to cast his vote against the war, understood its potential consequences and spoke out against it from the very start. Clinton hasn't managed to convince me that her administration would not just look to the glories of the Clinton heyday. Obama has consistently made "changing politics as usual" a centerpoint of his campaign. Given the way the country is looking these days, I think we could use a change from politics as usual.

A comparison?

In Northern Ireland today the Democratic Unionist Ian Paisley was sworn in as the first minister, with Sinn Fein (read: IRA) will take up his post as Paisley's deputy. World leaders are finally daring to hope that bloodshed in Northern Ireland will end.

I mention this for two reasons. The first is that this was an intense, deadly and bloody fight between two bodies of the same religion: the Protestants and the Catholics. Yes, they are officially divided into "Republicans" and "Loyalists," but for all intents and purposes, this was a religious power struggle, and everyone knows it. And it took decades of actual fighting to resolve the issue at last.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

The second reason I mention this is that these two sides, who are not exactly best buds, were able to overcome their differences for the sake of their suffering people. The people of America are not exactly suffering as a whole at this point, but the soldiers in Iraq certainly aren't having the time of their lives. We can only hope that the Democrats and Republicans can have the same levels of maturity as the Unionists and Sinn Fein.

The New Plan

Despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans want our troops to remain in Iraq, Bush will keep them there as long as he wants, because the amount of Republicans in Congress is just enough to keep the Democrats from gaining a two-thirds majority. However, the Democrats are doing just as Bush asked, and cooperating with him, trying to reach a bipartisan decision to help the soldiers in Iraq. The new bill they are working on would deliver the money to the president in two stages. No, the president is not going to like it. Yes, he is going to whine and complain to the media about how by not giving him exactly what he wants the Dems are being unpatriotic, not supporting the troops, and probably killing babies too, just for good measure. But in the end, this will probably do what the Democrats couldn't do with the first bill: pass with enough support to show Bush that this new Congress really isn't messing around. Sure, there will be enough "loyal Bushies" in Congress to fight with the Dems. But at last it will pass, and at last there will be a viable option to getting us out of this war.

One Signature

It's becoming more and more obvious why we need a Democratic President. Bush has, in the words of Barack Obama, "stubbornly ignored the will of the American people. " I don't think that anyone else could have put it better. The Democratic majority in Congress is a direct result of the unhappiness of the populace with the Bush administration's current course of action. The only thing that Bush is going to do by vetoing the war is to further that discontent, and put the Democrats in place to hold congress in the upcoming elections. However, I would rather see one less soldier in Iraq die for an unwanted, unpopular war than see all the seats in Congress go to the Democratic party. Senator Obama is absolutely right in this instance. It is time to get out of Iraq and think through a new strategy for the war on terrorism. Maybe, this time, our commanders will actually think through a strategy.