Because It's Important

At the risk of being a one-issue voter, I would like to note the significant absence of a certain issue from this Presidential race. Perhaps it’s because I’m not one of those average “folks” that candidates talk about (a word that enters their vocabulary when they announce that they’re running) who appear to be “tired of” and “fed up with” a lot of things we didn’t know we were tired of or fed up with, but what ever happened to that whole President-as-self-made-dictator thing? The expansion of the executive branch by Presidential mandate is not an expansion of George Bush’s power, but of the power of the office. One of the most important issues to me is whether either candidate has plans to reduce this branch of government back to constitutional standards. Here’s why it’s important:

For character voters (did you see the way he snubbed our troops!? He must be so elitist!), this tells us whether the candidate has enough integrity to lead this country. I cite the example of George Washington, whose decision to step down at the end of his term as President was arguably the founding act of our nation, and the reason for the stability of our democracy. These are the conventions that, no matter what legal loophole may be exploited to break them, must be preserved at all costs precisely because it shows one’s faith in our system, as opposed to one’s national agenda. Talk about your transcendent challenges. This is what makes America America, and why countries like Kenya (three Presidents in half a century) may never achieve stability.

It is also vital to restore the voter’s confidence in the government. Over the past eight years, the Bush administration has done the most damage to this nation not merely through making bad decisions on a legitimate political level, but through pushing the boundaries of constitutionality in such a way that our government appears not to have any internal accountability whatsoever. The President’s approval rating is in the toilet not because people simply disagreed with him politically (this country is nowhere near 70% Democrat) but because he had violated standards that allow the government to function, and done things (wiretapping, war sans congress, outing secret operatives, human rights violation, torture, a-legal prison facilities, retroactive motives for conflict, and the list goes on and on) that are not just illegal, but smack of an entirely different political system altogether. The Democrats made a fatal error when they took over Congress in 2006 and then merely opposed Bush ideologically, as if he had said something offensive! No, that’s not why they were elected at all. Why, after everything that has happened, would that be the response of any patriotic politician – even Republicans? American “folks” are fed up with Washington because it has made itself out to be totally impotent in the face of bullies who are actually interested in running the country. This administration ignores the judiciary as if this were the time of Andrew Jackson. It goes to war as if its platform was manifest destiny. It breaks the law like Richard Nixon. Then it recreates history to justify itself like we were some fragile communist state. Why isn’t this the Bush we’re fighting against? Bush’s policies on energy and economics, if public memory permits me to move back before this race started, were pre-9/11 concerns. The actions that defined his Presidency were those that overreached his power in the wake of Sept. 11, resurrecting the politics and rhetoric of the Cold War to create a war that has dragged this country down in every possible way: the level of political discourse, the stability of the economy, international perception, the internal balance of power, and even the flagrant violation of our own Constitution. What can Americans do about it? Absolutely nothing at all! What have the other branches of government done about it? Absolutely nothing at all! Voter confidence has been shattered. Voter interest, however, has not.

This is why John McCain and Barack Obama need to address the Bush we all know instead of this Snidely Whiplash character for whom we have a vague dislike, and who must be wrong on whatever it is they’re disagreeing with him about at the time (those legendary “failed policies of the Bush administration”). I am not talking about failed policies. The true test of which candidate will truly break from the Bush administration is who will break with the true legacy of the Bush administration: tyranny. Gas prices may be high, the war may still be expensive, and the economy may actually be in recession, but the rest, thanks to our remarkably inept Democrats, is not yet history. Let’s hope that it is not also our future.