Candace

Talmadge

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May 26, 2008

Questions for the Next President

Congratulations, Candidate X. You won the election and will be sworn in as the next U.S. president this January. Now you alone can answer the many questions lingering from the previous U.S. political regime – questions that speak to the very soul of this nation.

Will you pull U.S. troops out of Iraq? If yes, how quickly and to what extent? Will this be a window-dressing withdrawal or the genuine article? If not, why not? Please provide a specific and rational definition of “victory” in Iraq plus realistic steps and timeframe in which to attain it. How do you plan to pay for it when the U.S. government is awash in trillions of dollars of red ink right now? 

Keeping money as the topic, will your Justice Department finally act on as many as 50 reported cases of financial fraud by Iraq and Afghanistan war contractors? At present, the Bush Justice Department won’t confirm or deny these various whistleblower allegations, all of which have been filed in secret as mandated by law. This politically convenient inaction by federal prosecutors keeps the specific charges and extent of fraud allegations from being made public. Taxpayers have a right to know where their money went wrong in these wars. Will you insist that the Justice Department do its job? 

On the subject of law enforcement, will your Justice Department remember that it is not an arm of your political party, and that its job is not to ensure that members of your political party win elections? The Bush Justice Department pursued politically motivated, malicious prosecutions of former Wisconsin civil servant Georgia Thompson and former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. It also fired outstanding prosecutors who did not act in a sufficiently partisan manner. Will your Justice Department end this illegal and unethical nonsense? 

Speaking of justice for all, will you act to patch up shredded U.S. moral credibility? Will you close the prison at Guantanamo Bay? Will you demand an end to any further use of torture? Will you insist that all U.S. prisoners be treated according to the Geneva Conventions and granted the same due process rights as defendants in U.S. courts? Will you hold members of the Bush Administration – even the former president and vice president – accountable for actions that may have broken the law? Or will you shy away from tough decisions about enforcing the law equally, if doing so inconveniences those at the top? 

Will you insist that government bureaucracies be competent at a minimum? Will you remove partisan politics from regulatory decisions that should be guided solely by the best evidence available? Will you stop providing tax dollars to religious organizations that use them as indirect subsidies for sectarian activities like proselytizing? Will you address the takeover of the U.S. military – especially the Air Force – by Christian extremists? 

How will you deal with a new Gilded Age economy that rewards the few at the expense of the many? Will you put the U.S. middle class on the endangered species list and take steps to help preserve it? If yes, will you be open to innovative ideas that do not rely solely on government action or exclusively on the private sector? If not, why not? Ordinary Americans’ shrinking/vanishing paychecks aren’t even covering the basics these days. Are they not worth helping out during the current era of economic upheaval? Or do we save the federal subsidies and other government goodies only for major corporate and wealthy individual campaign contributors? 

What about the absurdly inefficient and outrageously expensive U.S. health care system? Will you reward the usual suspect special interests with a national individual insurance mandate? Or will you institute real reform and provide Medicare for all? Don’t ordinary Americans deserve the kind of taxpayer-funded health care that you and all former presidents, vice presidents and members of Congress receive for life? Why should a multi-millionaire official like Dick Cheney coast on free health care for the rest of his days when the rest of us must pay one way or another for the same kinds of services (if not the same quality)? 

Frankly, the sanity of anyone is open to question who campaigned as long, as hard, and as expensively as you have done to become leader of a nation in the condition of the United States – trillions of dollars in the hole, polarized and stoked with vague fears about terrorists for the past eight years. 

But the job is now yours, and so are the many unanswered questions. Make of it what you can, and above all, don’t forget to lead. Call on your fellow Americans for help, inspiration and practical contributions to finding some answers. No person or nation can go it alone successfully, as the last U.S. administration’s resounding failures so tragically demonstrate.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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