President Giuliani. President Romney. President Huckabee. President Just-Shoot-Me.
In America, anyone who wants to can grow up to be President. That's the problem.
There is no guarantee at all that the next occupant of the Oval Office will be as opposed to the Iraq war as the vast majority of the American people have been for several years. There is no reason to assume that the White House will be held in 2009 by someone who believes that what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have done to the Constitution constitutes impeachable high crimes. It is today entirely possible that the next President will leave health care to the pharmaceutical lobby, energy policy to the oil companies, and science to the Scriptures. There is nothing remotely comforting about our current system for selecting presidential candidates, about the way presidential campaigns are conducted and covered, or about the process in which ballots are cast, counted and translated into electoral votes. To think otherwise is denial, wishful thinking - the magical thinking of children.
Despite all this country has gone through, anything can happen next November. Why should we believe that 2008 will not produce a President as incompetent and lawless as 2004 did, or as unelected as 2000 did?
If we think the news media in 2008 will rescue us from lying and demagoguery, we must have slept through its coverage of the runup to Iraq, its yawning at Valerie Plame's outing and the Justice Department's corruption, its enabling of the Social Security "crisis," of "amnesty" propaganda, of the "other side" to evolution and climate change.
If we think that three billion dollars' worth of campaign ads in 2008 won't persuade Americans that day is night and black is white, we must not recall the Swift Boating.
If we place our faith in the critical thinking skills of the American people, we must have amnesia about the majority persuaded that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.
(Continued here.)
There is no guarantee at all that the next occupant of the Oval Office will be as opposed to the Iraq war as the vast majority of the American people have been for several years. There is no reason to assume that the White House will be held in 2009 by someone who believes that what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have done to the Constitution constitutes impeachable high crimes. It is today entirely possible that the next President will leave health care to the pharmaceutical lobby, energy policy to the oil companies, and science to the Scriptures. There is nothing remotely comforting about our current system for selecting presidential candidates, about the way presidential campaigns are conducted and covered, or about the process in which ballots are cast, counted and translated into electoral votes. To think otherwise is denial, wishful thinking - the magical thinking of children.
Despite all this country has gone through, anything can happen next November. Why should we believe that 2008 will not produce a President as incompetent and lawless as 2004 did, or as unelected as 2000 did?
If we think the news media in 2008 will rescue us from lying and demagoguery, we must have slept through its coverage of the runup to Iraq, its yawning at Valerie Plame's outing and the Justice Department's corruption, its enabling of the Social Security "crisis," of "amnesty" propaganda, of the "other side" to evolution and climate change.
If we think that three billion dollars' worth of campaign ads in 2008 won't persuade Americans that day is night and black is white, we must not recall the Swift Boating.
If we place our faith in the critical thinking skills of the American people, we must have amnesia about the majority persuaded that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.
(Continued here.)
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