What We Need in a President

Let’s face it. Americans act and talk like their president. They adopt many of the behaviors of the president. They take the president’s advice and they adopt the president’s logic and ways of thinking. Everybody thinks they can be president of the United States.

It would seem to follow then that the single most important trait in someone who will be president of the United States is idealism. A president who does not aspire to idealism in his administration of the executive branch is not going to be an effective president. It is that spirit of idealism that sets a moral tone that will guide the nation. The president does not govern the nation. The nation governs itself. That’s why we have governors and mayors and county supervisors and sundry bureaucrats . They’re the ones who manage the nation. It is up to the president to take a moral and strategic view.  He is there to encourage, inspire and motivate Americans to be their best and to do great things in their daily lives. He gets the nation to fulfill its promise as outlined in the Constitution. The president is supposed to be someone who can unite the American spirit and explain to us that our differences are a source of strength, not a weakness. By setting an example for all Americans, the president should remind us to be good and to be proud of our American heritage. In other words, a president should be everything that George W. Bush is not , has never been and never will be. The president needs to be the moral and ethical leader of the nation. We have not had ethical and moral leadership for many years. Bill Clinton failed to inspire people with moral decision making. George W. Bush has been an anti-ethical leader. The white superiority mindset of the Bush Administration has infected the mindset of the nation.

By now most of America has a good sense of the immorality that has been the hallmark of the current administration, a cabal of despots who have betrayed the spirit of the U.S. Constitution. American dignity has been stripped away by the Republican Party, which really can no longer call itself the Party of Lincoln. It has become the Party of Nixon, an impeached president who let his paranoia and distrust of the American people overtake his sense of morality. George W. Bush has faithfully subscribed to Nixon’s low-dignity values. Reagan also was a good Nixonian Republican in that he began the dismantlement of the American middle class without conscience or morals. James Carville, the political strategist who helped Bill Clinton win the White House in 1992, said that the greatest gift that a person can give is his labor. The Republican Party has no respect for labor or the American working class. The Party of Nixon, under George W. Bush, has humiliated American democracy in front of the entire world. It is time for a new way of thinking. It is time for a president who understands ethics and who can lead from a position of morality, goodness and fairness.

 It’s time to open up the American presidency to a new generation that can lead and inspire us in the 21st century. The American Century has given way to the Pacific Century and that means China and Japan and Taiwan and South Korea (and hopefully North Korea) and Vietnam and Thailand and the Philippines, and Indonesia (and hopefully Burma). It is time to bring in new blood and new cultural insights at the highest levels of dignity. It’s time for a new line of dignity to represent America in the White House.

If Barack Obama becomes president, this country will start to feel different. Change really will happen and America might actually be able to start functioning as a true world leader in the 21st century sense of the word. As things stand now, we have a nation that has been fighting against a status quo that we have maintained since the nation was founded. Regrettably, we still have not broken out of the chains of racism that hold us down. We need to actualize what Martin Luther King, Jr. had started long ago. No doubt there will be convulsions from racism and resistance to change, change that has been delayed for too long. America needs an exorcism to help it cleanse its soul and open its heart, which is paralyzed by stone-cold indifference to what really matters in life. America needs to come to terms with the fact that it is a nation that discriminates in many, many different ways. It is a nation that discriminates in favor of those who have money and privilege. It is a nation that has perfected the art of discrimination within the framework of a “legal system”.

The Dalai Lama has said that Americans are very smart people but that we need to think more with our hearts. America’s competitive advantage in the world is its moral tone and its adherence to principles of equity and fair play. If America loses its morality, it loses.  And China wins.