"With all the power that a president has, the most important thing to bear in mind is this: You must not give power to a man unless, above everything else, he has character. Character is the most important qualification the president of the United States can have.” President Richard Nixon
March 12, 2014
By: Linda Case Gibbons
We all like a bargain, but at the very least we like to get our money’s worth.
But when it comes to our country, we’re not getting the best bang for our buck.
Happy to do our part, we pay our taxes, balance our household budgets, vote and even if our candidate doesn’t win, we support our elected president. Once he’s voted in, we’re behind him.
Shoulder to shoulder, Americans have always presented a united front.
We work hard. We have true grit. We create businesses in our garages, we create jobs when those businesses take off, we create art, we raise good kids and all while holding our day jobs.
Some of us give more than others, the people who step up to the plate and volunteer to protect us. The ones who go to war and go even when their fellow citizens disagree with that war and hold demonstrations to show their displeasure.
These soldiers give away the best they have for their country. They’re Americans and they wouldn’t do less.
Is our country perfect? Nah. Who likes "perfect” anyway? Wrinkles and mistakes along the way mark a man’s journey through life.
No, in America when we stumble, when we need to do better, we fix it.
Bring it. Japanese interment? Racial prejudice? Slavery? We handled it. We cured it. And we made it a Priority.
What other country does that?
Ask yourself, ask your president, how are human rights handled in North Korea? Russia? China?
And we’re not called a "Melting Pot” for nothing. We are a diverse country, respectful of each other. We duke
it out in the arena of ideas. We bring the issues out in the open and we take care of business.
In the open, not in secrecy. Our Constitution tells the world that’s the way we roll and we demand it from our elected officials.
So, no, Americans refuse to be accused of racism simply because they ask their president, the mainstream press, the members of Congress, the Administration’s agencies to do their jobs of serving The People.
Americans won’t settle for having their voices silenced when they ask the hard questions that need to be answered.
They won’t settle for any leader who tries to divide them, who deliberately sets one group against another sheerly for political gain.
They will not tolerate it when the people elected to represent them are allowed to spy on them, lie to them, target them, and destroy the country’s fiber, little by little, by not enforcing the laws they swore to uphold and by circumventing the U.S. Constitution.
They will not stand idly by when an attorney general, the head of the Department of Justice of the United States of America, tells state governors they don’t have to enforce laws with which they disagree.
Or when a president refuses to enforce the laws of our land, on our borders, for our healthcare and makes it his avowed promise that he will bypass the other branches of government to pass whatever he wants, whenever he can.
That isn’t America. It may be Russia. It may be North Korea, but it’s not what Americans signed up for.
So, tell me, how do you like the job your elected officials are doing? How do you like what the public servants appointed by the president to federal agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue are doing?
What do you think about our president and his agencies waging war against the people of this country, when they should be doing their jobs?
Our presidents come in every shape and size, from different religious persuasions. They bring their own ideas and their own brand of deep and abiding belief in our country. No matter what.
We didn’t call President George Washington, "The Father of His Country” without deep thought to what that phrase meant and the man it described.
Our President.
Its meaning is real and historical and poignant to us. As president, Washington gave and asked for nothing in return. He watched as this magnificent country was born and he was determined to do all he could to see it survive.
We have always relied on the fact that the president of the United States unquestionably protects our country and our people with the fierce love a father has for his children.
Nothing less will do. That’s the bang for the buck.
So broken promise after broken promise?
Videos that blatantly contradict what the current president said before he said what he’s saying now?
Disinterest? Ignorance of the country’s history? Disrespect for everything that makes this country great and a vendetta to change it all from the ground up?
Will you settle for that?
And did you think you would live to see the day when Congress would have to pass a bill to gain standing to sue the president? And that the suit would be for arbitrarily refusing to enforce federal laws of the land?
Did you think there would be another bill requiring the president to explain it when he made decisions not to enforce laws?
It happened this week.
Did you think you’d see the day that the president would respond to this by saying he would veto those bills?
It happened this week.
This past week New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin had some insight into the current political scene. He introduced us to the twins he called "Oblasio.”
"It’s his strikingly bad judgment and unappealing style of leadership,” he said of the mayor. "His habit of lecturing and his belief that talking is the same as doing make him a twin of President Obama. Think of them as ‘Oblasio.’”
Driven by their ideologies, favoring the unions, warring against some and not others, favoring some and not others.
Says it all.
Hold the line, America.