The next President has his work cut out for him

by  Georgie Anne Geyer^*  [Filed 8-21-08]

The next two weeks could be among the most exciting in our nation's history.  Think of it: Despite all our flaws, we will once again engage in this amazing, and still almost unique, process where the balance of political power of the nation will be publicly displayed and absorbed―and end up dependent upon the will and approval of the people.

This is no small thing.  Such free elections had not happened before the revolution begun in 1776.  And it stands as even more amazing in a world in which, outside of Europe, and despite democratic aspirations on the parts of many, governments still range mostly from new authoritarians, to enlightened monarchs to ruthless dictatorships.

We call the conventions the emanations of "political parties."  In truth, these are groups of Americans who link themselves together in ideas and ideologies, in ambitions and ambiguities, in dreams and drama, to see who we will put forward to rule the United States for the next four years.  Soon, "the play" will begin.

Despite the excitement, with the Republican convention coming hard upon the Democratic one, the next president, no matter who he is, will find an American situation intensely changed from the ones our former presidents inherited.  The changes may not immediately be evident, but they will soon come to be.  They are new and painfully difficult ones to address.

He will not find a coherent military at his fingertips.  The generals, today more bureaucrat than MacArthur, will find it necessary to play to his ambitions: "The greatest military we have ever had!"  But the fact is that, deep inside, the Army is hollowing out.

The truth comes in details.  The Washington Post reports how the demands on the Army for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed dangerously to "a shortfall of thousands of majors, who are the critical mid-level officers."  More and more officers are "getting out."  Even more telling is the soldiers' own response, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics: Troops deployed overseas have sent six times as much money to Barack Obama as John McCain, and even four times as much to retired candidate Ron Paul!

The new president will find a country that may look as prosperous as it always was, but is not.  His country is now essentially owned by China.  Banks and huge investment houses, not to speak of mortgage lenders such as Fannie Mae, with its billions of dollars of losses in mortgages and its now virtually worthless stock, are collapsing.

The reasons are encompassed in two words: "regulation" and "accountability."  Nobody wants to say it because everybody liked the man, but in fact the Reagan Revolution of deregulation of the economy has been disastrous.  Men are not angels; they need oversight and control.  That's where accountability comes.  It's the old Protestant ethic that we no longer dare speak of.

The new president will find American environmentalism alive and well among our people― but not backed up with funding.  The United States, for instance, has merely two icebreakers, one out of commission, while an expansionist Russia has at least a dozen―and in terms of investigating changes in the Arctic, all nations need icebreakers to get there!

The new president will not find in Washington the journalists who used to cover presidents for papers "out there" and who have so enriched our national dialogue.

Daily, it seems, one hears of a new Washington bureau being closed.  As I write this, the respected Newhouse News Service, which had employed 11 reporters for papers from Newark to New Orleans, has shut its doors.  Perhaps worse, even as we expand our military intrigues ever further across the globe, the numbers of foreign correspondents has sunk to an abysmal low.

The new president will still have reports from his embassies, from his intelligence agents and from his military officers, of course.  But the real information that keeps a president honest, or not, has come from those independent analysts, the small number of foreign correspondents.

He will find that the international organizations that the United States was central in forming in our glory days after World War II are seriously struggling: The International Monetary Fund just warned that global financial markets are "fragile," and the World Trade Organization's Doha negotiating round, after seven years of work, has failed, leaving world trade in a danger zone that is no less real for being invisible to most Americans.

And if he seriously looks at the war in Afghanistan, he will see nothing but danger.  As I write, BBC correspondents are announcing that the Taliban, which has been successfully choking off NATO supplies to the south, might even attack Kabul!

In World War II, we were blessed with the dedication of our collective spirit. But this ain't World War II.  The job will be long, sluggish and difficult, but utterly necessary. We need to pay off debts, keep out of adventurous little wars in obscure countries, and stop the immoral and unproductive gravy train running among our top CEOs.  We need to redo ourselves from inside out―according to our Founding Fathers' moral values.

Here's the problem: This is just what we don't do well.  But the truth is, it's going to take a new and profound approach, dedication and sacrifice by all of us, and especially by the next president. God bless America in these next two weeks―and certainly beyond.

 

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*Georgie Anne Geyer won a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Vienna, joining the Chicago Daily News as a society reporter in 1959 before switching to international reporting.  A multilingual syndicated columnist, she covered revolutionary activities in Peru and the Dominican Republic, reported from the field in Europe, was the first Westerner to interview Saddam Hussein, and also interviewed Yasser Arafat, Anwar Sadat, King Hussein, Moammar Gadhafi, and the Ayatollah Khomeini.  Geyer has authored several books on Latin America, Russia, and the Middle East, including an acclaimed 1993 biography of Fidel Castro.