Third Millennium President

For reasons I never before considered, a number of countries have a Chief Executive and another man as Head of State. Periodically, this ideas surfaces in the United States. The primary reason is that as structured, the duties of our president are more than we have a right to expect of one man.

Considering the strengths, and weaknesses, and personalities of recent presidents, as well as I can know and understand them, I think it is time for us to consider a change. Here are a few of the deficiencies that I see currently.

In hindsight, we can all see and know that the economic cycle had peaked in late 2000, and turned down. Did I see it then? No. Should a president, with the best financial brains in the country at his disposal, have known, and taken some counter actions in the Spring of 2001? Surely this is a very important function of our presidents.

We have been told that President Bush is the first president to have been awarded an MBA - by Harvard no less. If an MBA cannot understand business and finance and the economy any better than the average American, what do MBA graduates learn?

It appears that he may not have time to learn the facts of corporate crime, or time to do anything about this. Crimes were committed and men should have been indicted, arrested, tried and in jail by February 2002. I saw him on television today, saying that the economy is basically sound. That is insufficient.

This subject should be of more concern to G.W. Bush than to any other man who might have been president. I know, and surely he knows, that his father lost an election for a second term because he appeared to ignore the bad economy during the election cycle.

As of this writing it appears that President Bush is going to spend most of the month of August in Texas, on vacation. If he does not do something dramatic, and very soon, the Republicans will lose control of the House in November. A major blow that would make him less effective and more vulnerable to defeat for a second term.

Our nation has an abundance of cliché's about our system of justice - our judicial system - our concept of justice. "We are a nation of laws, not men." "All men are equal under the law." "No man is above the law", and many more that I have missed.

Any person with average intelligence and eyesight today, can see and know that there is no truth to any of these. This is the Information Age, and every person is constantly bombarded with a never ending stream of information. In many, if not most cases, we may not always pay attention, but the human mind cannot be turned off. It records data whether we intend or not.

During the Clinton administration, there were some illegal actions or activities, and criminal acts. To try to make it easy, and for demonstrations purposes, look at the interesting deaths of government officials. Vince Foster, Admiral Boorda, Ron Brown, and Alice Wise.

All four of these deaths were unusual, and all were "investigated" and officially closed. The investigations, the autopsies and the death reports will be added to those of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. The majority of the American people do not believe the government version, and they never will. President Clinton wanted them closed, and they were, but surely the new president is not bound by that.

Minor criminal acts were commonplace, and the G.W. Bush administration has not looked at any of them. Who hired Craig Livinsgstone? Why were 1,000 FBI files sent to the White House and apparently given to a man that nobody will admit they hired. How long were the files there, and why were they there? Was data extracted from the files?

Of course there were enough more serious criminal acts to require doubling the staff of the Attorney General. If Ruby Ridge and Waco, and Oklahoma City were examined by impartial law enforcement people, who knows what we might learn. They were closed, and this administration intends to keep them that way.

In a different area, we have the business corruption. Not a new idea, but it hit the headlines of the major newspapers in December 2001. Until July 2002, President Bush did not have a word to say about them, all the while new scandals are uncovered and the American people continue to lose their jobs and megabillions. The president finally said that if crimes have been committed the guilty will be punished, or some other trite phrase.

I must admit at the start, that I am not smart enough to understand a war on terrorism. I did not see, and still do not see, that the Afghans were a serious threat to us. In fact, what I have seen has convinced me that it was a country composed primarily of tribes, and bands of people with a very loose central government whose people were generally underfed and in poor health.

Oh, but they drove planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Well, it did happen, but as far as I can see, the men involved were not Afghans. Almost all of them were Saudis, and to date, we are not going to take any action against, or say anything bad about the Saudis.

Every day it seems that some government official or civilian "expert" is telling us that we are going to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein. Is this something the government of the U.S. should be doing? What article of the Constitution provides for this kind of action? As far as I know, Saddam has been very quiet for a decade. If he is manufacturing weapons, it seems like that is a legal function of a sovereign state. The United States probably has more weapons of mass destruction that all other nations combined. I cannot see that he is a threat to the United States or its people.

If the United States does nothing, it is my opinion that an internal revolt would replace Saddam in the relatively near future. The people of Iraq know that they need to get into the mainstream of nations if they want a better life. And they do want it. The population is growing and the people are being squeezed. Iran is in a relatively similar position.

Immigration is a relatively new problem for the United States. As with most problems, it was created by our legislators. The WASPs who were the primary settlers of the United States, and the people who made it a great country, needed a challenge. The legislators decided to cut historic immigration down to near zero, and bring in the really good and productive people from Cuba, China, Vietnam, India, Sudan, Somalia and Zimbabwe.

The editorial in the San Diego Union-Tribune this morning is about the problems and high cost of our current immigration policies. They print one of these editorials frequently for the simple reason that it is one of the major problems that the federal government has imposed upon this area - as well as many others in the nation. In the same newspaper this morning, an article tells us the House Minority Leader Richard Gebhardt will try to legalize 5 million illegal immigrants now in the United States. Of course nobody really knows how many legal or illegal immigrants are now in the U.S., who they are, or where they are. Are we really a nation of laws?

Illegal immigration is a serious problem. It was illustrated very dramatically by the events of September 11, 2001, and subsequent investigations into our lack of border control. Not only are illegal drugs entering the United States almost unimpeded, but so are people from all over the world. Terrorists from the Middle East are absolutely entering the United States through Canada and Mexico, and our federal legislators refuse to see this danger or pay any attention to it. The president appears to be giving his full attention to his duties as Head of State, and too little if any to his duties as chief executive.

One of the dumbest ideas I've ever seen paraded around this site. We're talking about the United States, not some third class city.

I think the problem is our expectations of what a president is suppsed to be and do. We want a combination CEO, father-figure and national nanny. We as a nation need to grow up.

The United States should consider dividing the presidency into two parts - Head of State and Chief Executive. President Bush would be excellent as Head of State. He seems to fail, however, in his responsibility as Chief Executive.
Heads of state do not co-rule with presidents or prime ministers. Heads of state have no executive power at all. Heads of state serve to provide some sense of continuity in parlaimentary systems with proprortional representation--where one party or coalition of parties rule, and minority parties are effectively excluded. Generally heads of state call on party heads to form governments in parlaimentary systems, when the voting is such that the government formed by the ruling party or coalition of parties collapses, it loses its mandate etc.--but this only ratifies the votes of the electorate.

Our system is different: we have a divided government, in which the minority party or parties fully participate (to the degree they hold seats, office etc.).

Isn't that what France has? A president who is head of state and a premier who is governor-in-chief? Look what that led to. Or England, where the Prime Minister is chief exec and the Queen is head of state. Many Brits don't like what it costs to keep a monarch in style. Or maybe Canada? The head of state is nominally the governor-general, representative on the ground of a foreign queen, in theory. It hasn't stopped Canada from damned-near socialism.

One advantage, though, might be that it could be easier to impeach and convict a traitorous rapist when the 'state' rests elsewhere.

This article brings up the point that the President is the executive officer of his department. In practice the Presidency has expanded past the point of executive to the point of dictator. The legislature has delegated authority to him that belongs to them in our Constitutional framework. There is an ongoing loss of responsibility and freedom for the public. At the rate we are progressing, a dictatorship is in our future.

At the rate we are progressing, a dictatorship is in our future.

Depending on the definition, it is here.
Recall Clinton's parting rash of executive orders.
"Sign your name, make a law. Neat."

"We as a nation need to grow up."

And we as a nation need to go back to Constitutional basics. A President should not have to waste his time on school uniforms, HeadStart, and knowing the price of bread.

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