Presidential Races, Values and Cults

What a quandary for the thinking person. Americans have become sadly disillusioned that their expectations of President Barack Obama have simply not been met. His presidency has been a bit of a disaster. Internally and externally. Although it wasn't his fault that he inherited a Pandora's box of vexing problems, it seems to be the way he has handled them that has dashed hope.

In the financial crisis that met the incoming president, his advisers recommended positions for him to take in pursuit of rescue of the large financial houses of the country. This was a real test, a balancing act, since it was those very financial houses over which government agencies relaxed their scrutiny that set the stage for economic failure through worthless transactions that impacted the international financial community.

What President Obama effectively did was bail out the financial institutions that were considered to be 'too large to fail', along with auto manufacturers to preserve employment and industrial pride, which ended up enormously benefiting wealthy industrialists, financiers, speculators, bankers who shamelessly grabbed bonuses for their failures, while the public went looking for disappearing employment.

What President Obama did on the international fora was to visit European capitals and Muslim states to utter his famous 'mea culpas' on behalf of his country, humbling himself and the United States in an admission of overbearing righteousness and bullying that he would personally see to it would come to an immediate halt. To Islam he exhorted tolerance of America's errors, they would not be repeated, America and Islam are brothers in peace.

The Nobel Awards Committee thought as highly of Obama as did the international community, thrilled at the prospect of an America steered forward by a justice-seeking, fair-minded, peace-inspiring intellectual whose leftist devotion to spiritual brotherhood seemed a promising medicine for all that ailed the world community. In proposing peaceful relations while pursuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a Nobel Peace Prize winner was born.

So who have Americans to turn to now in their great disaffection? Why a dim-witted, right-blasting coterie of Republican egotists, each convinced that they and they alone represent the formulaic human material to turn the fortunes of that great nation back on its original trajectory as powerhouse of the world community.

The strongest of the Republican presidential candidates is an also-ran who lost to a stronger rival last time around, who himself failed to ignite the voting enthusiasm of the electorate. The Republican candidates who have placed themselves front-and-centre for the next U.S. federal election all seem to resemble the unfortunate Sarah Palin in one way or another.

Their uninformed and bigoted utterances betray their incapacities, their inappropriateness for the presumed job at hand. Rick Perry considers the Mormon Church to be outside mainstream Christianity although it is the fourth largest denomination in the country. An evangelical pastor, one of Perry's strong supporters claimed in Perry's hearing: "Every true, born-again follower of Christ ought to embrace a Christian over a non-Christian."

Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Perry himself inferred disagreement but made no commitment toward defending Mitt Romney for his Mormon-inspired Christian faith. Rick Perry has expressed his personal opinion on intelligent design, and has some fairly fundamentalist ideas that should frighten people out of his orbit. Michelle Bachmann is yet another overtly fundamentalist Christian. Is that truly a requisite for President?

That's one issue pointing out the divisions, purely and puzzlingly sectarian, between the candidates. Romney, now generally acknowledged as the leading contender, once helped gay marriage become established in Massachusetts, expressed a moderate view on abortion rights, and introduced a universal medicare protocol to Massachusetts.

Now, for expedients' sake, he disavows all those positions to raise his Republican credentials among the Tea Party skeptics. Some choices, facing American voters. A civil war of uncivil words and deeds is afflicting America. This is not reflective of the brilliance of the United States. A diverse population of entrepreneurs, intellectuals, scientists, artists leading the world.

It doesn't even reflect the America of the great mass of ordinary people who just want to get on with their lives, who aspire to live decent, caring lives and feel that a country as wealthy as theirs should have no problem ensuring that all its citizens who wish to be, are gainfully employed. The issue of universal medicare is one that has embarrassed the country for far too long.

The mission of America the staunch and just, the dependable interlocutor, the cherished humanitarian agency of the world is still a reality. For all its faults and its national foibles, the United States still stands out as a beacon to the world. Somehow, its politicians have missed the boat; it is not the able and the capable who are responding to the call to duty.