What Matters Most Next Time

With the 2008 Presidential election upon us, many people will start considering issues again in a more serious analysis than what a headline would give you. One stance that will get much attention is how a candidate will steer the war on terror. In my opinion, the next President will lose his or her freedom to act rather quickly and as I elaborate on why this is, you may realize along with me, that choosing the congress is perhaps the more important choice to be made next year.

History suggest that shortly after the next president takes office someone or some group will challenge the office holder with an attack on our national interest and/or pride. Obviously some will blame Bush first, that's well within their rights, but for the more sober observers of history whatever event this turns out to be, it'll be viewed as a natural course of events. Ridicule me for my flippancy about this, but Presidents have been challenged in one way or another for decades, I'm not that naive to think that Hillary's cult of personality, for example, will deter or pacify our enemies thirst for American blood.

If your own recollection of history doesn't convince you of this, I'll give you another nation's history to look into for a lesson on uncivilized receptions from the more malicious global community. Israel. However, there maybe something attractive to you about living like the Israelis do, with the threat of attack palpable everyday. To each his own.

In any event, every time Israel elects a new leader, someone bombs a cafe in Tel Aviv. Again, I have no reason to doubt it will not happen in 2008 or 2009 somewhere in the U.S.

At that point, considering no one wants to be a one term president, even Dennis Kucinich is going to respond in a manner more forceful than what he would have had you believe in 2007. Because regardless of what you believe about the American people today in terms of desiring peace, when faced with the choice between a wimp who doesn't respond and a candidate who at least argues to fight back, the choice isn't going to the wimp.

So you have that pressure on the next President to react, and it may very well be more aggressive than personal preferences would like.

Another pressure on the next President is the congress.

I must lay bare that I don't hold very many of these politicians in high regard. Recent history shows that very many of them will vote for a course of action today, but by noon tomorrow will have changed their mind and will be demanding the 180 degree opposite of what they voted for.

Take the recent surge in Iraq. The new generals held few secrets when it came time to explain themselves to congress on what they intend to do in Iraq and how long it will take. After
confirming these men, Congress is now anxiously attempting to pull the plug on the plans months before the the agreed upon time table.

Rashness my quell the impatient, but it isn't useful to quell the unrest in Iraq, nor will it lend strength to the people we want to win, rather to those we want to defeat.

So what is a new President to do? Faced with the realities of being attacked by deadly enemies wherever they can and thus eroding the public confidence and/or being attacked by the less deadly but every bit as effective in emasculating a Commander in Chief congress, I bet the new guy gets tough real quick. There will be little freedom left to him to do otherwise.

In this situation I don't think it will make much difference who wins the next election for the White House. To be sure, there will be plenty of time to attempt dialogues or approaches that Mr. Bush didn't attempt, but a reputation of strength works in the real world, unfortunately we have squandered much of that reputation recently.

Things will be different in many ways, but if we don't collective make a better decision on who is in congress, I think our external enemies will have an unwitting accomplice from a place where our next president and ourselves are expecting better from. We need to consider the reasons why we vote for someone for congress maybe a little bit beyond the letter next to their names. I haven't seen much 'r'esolve or 'd'etermination from our present congress and while the lack thereof from congress may not lose the war, it certainly isn't helping. Which is a change I'd like to see.