What Is Wrong With Our Leadership?

By James Donahue

As America struggles through the process of selecting our next president our national media seems so focused on the visible political maneuvering and state election of delegates that everyone is failing to see that something appears blatantly wrong.

The primary descriptive word for this election has been “change.” People have made it clear they are sick of the current administration, tired of the lies, the war, the deficit spending, the inability of this administration to do anything to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the reckless invasion of our privacy, the dismantling of our Constitution, and the dangerous movement toward fascism.

When polled, people say they want a leadership that will turn away from all of the things the Bush Administration has brought upon us since 9-11, and bring the nation back to what it used to be.

So what happened? All of the candidates who promised to end the Iraq war, curb excessive defense spending, give us a government-supported health care system, fix the crumbling education system and mend international relations, have been quickly knocked out of the race for the nation’s top job.

What we have left, at least among the so-called front-runners, are Democrats who will clearly break the mold if they get elected, a woman Hillary Clinton and a black man, Barack Obama; and Republicans John McCain and Mike Huckabee. McCain, a former POW and Vietnam veteran, and Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher, both support the war effort. Clinton says she wants to shut down the Iraq conflict, but as a member of the Senate she has voted regularly to support it. Only Obama offers some kind of a plan to close down the war, and he is somewhat vague as to just how he is going to do it.

As we watch this strange election process go on, and see the candidates who once excited us as potential leaders out of this quagmire fall by the wayside, we are beginning to suspect that someone is pulling some strings. We are feeling a gripping sense of paranoia as we watch prospects for real change disappear.

That odd report in September, 2007, that claimed President Bush is “quietly providing back-channel advice” to Hillary Clinton, asking her to tone down her anti-war rhetoric and give herself a position to continue the Iraq war if elected president, makes us think some kind of deal has been cut.

Have the powers that really run this nation already chosen Senator Clinton to succeed Bush? Has she sold out for the opportunity to make history and become the first woman president? And if she is handed the job, will it be business as usual? Has this contest between Clinton and Obama been a sham, all of it staged through controlled voting machines as a smokescreen designed to make the public believe we still have a choice?

 Why is it that the Democratic leadership, many of them elected to office in 2004 on promises to clean house, end the war and impeach both Bush and Vice-President Cheney for a variety of misdeeds, been unwilling to move?

Why can’t the Democrats stop the Republican drive to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide retroactive protection to telecommunications firms that agreed to administration demands to break the law and open private records without a court order? The proposed change would not only protect the big corporations, but would make it illegal for anyone to dig into executive communications, including e-mails, in the interest of national security.

With the threat of impeachment and possible criminal charges looming over both Bush and Cheney, the passage of such legislation would be the worst thing our legislators could do. The FISA issue is a secret, and mostly unreported effort by the Bush Administration and the Republican cronies in Washington to cover everything up before anybody finds out what really happened.

There is a smell of rotten decay drifting out of our high government offices these days. We just hope reporters on the hill have the courage and the conviction to do what is right and do their jobs before it is too late.