Who Would Charles DeGaulle Trust?

When I think of America and the trust in the world that we once garnered, I think of Charles DeGaulle during the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis.  President Kennedy flew to Paris to engage DeGaulle directly about the impending crisis and even before the photos could be shown, DeGaulle intimated that if he couldn't trust America, whom could he trust?

Maybe sometimes a phone call is better?

I keep remembering Hillary Clinton's 3 AM call campaign question and as I look at these Republican candidates I wonder whether there is one person on the stage from whom DeGaulle would TAKE a 3 AM call.

I mean, how imbecilic must we be to think Rick Perry, as President, could call Bebe Netanyahu in the middle of the night?  Or Sarkozy or who, Mom?  I mean, even with Jon Huntsman being an astute statesman, he really doesn't demand to be listened to.  And I like the guy.

Where is the pride in America that we used to have?  Where is the need to supply a competent face to the American people by having a highly qualified representative of those people?

The Republicans have gone crazy by staring too long into their front loader dryers and simply don't realize that we want the best people to represent us.

I feel bad for Rick Perry, but not because he was a contender.  No, it is because he actually thought he could be a contender.  The best I can say is that the Republican Party already brought up a Chimp that won and look where it got us.  I daresay the best thing about the Chimp was that at least he was a primate.

Rick Perry is a monkey.  In the words of Mark Twain, "It is not how well the dancing bear dances, but that he dances at all."

We have people who cannot perform as well as a dancing bear and they want to be President.

The unfortunate part of this is that if Mitt Romney is the only man left standing, then what does that say for the available talent, or the chances for America?  Even more unfortunate would be Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich as the last man standing.

I don't know what prompted Tim Pawlenty to leave the race so soon.  He didn't suffer any real harm and could have easily withstood a little scrutiny, but who knows.  He might have had some recent event that wouldn't stand the vetting.

Perhaps Chris Christie would have been an OK candidate, but he's not ripe yet.

Mitch Daniels could be a shoo-in in 2016, even over Chris Christie, but today's Republicans look like a Bozo the Clown School Revue and they are failing the clown class.

Let me say it this way, Mitt.  If it takes 59 points to grow jobs, then it is too many steps, and it means you hope people will get tired of reading.

Show me any four things that don't include giving everything away to the "job creators".  But the fallacy is that there are no job creators.  Industry and advancement always destroy jobs and depend on new industry and advancement to create new jobs. 

You or I could wish to hire as many people as possible, but unless we had unlimited money, we couldn't do it.  Neither can industry today.  There are no jobs because there is no market.

So if you, Mitt, can tell me where the market comes from, then maybe I'll read your 59 points, but honestly I'll bet you just repeat 6 items a whole bunch of times.

So my question still stands.  Who would Charles DeGaulle choose to trust out of this list of all the candidates?  I happen to believe that President Obama has put a face on America to the rest of the world.

And this is the main focus of America's place in the world lies, and how we present ourselves to the world in our elections.

I've often complained about Congress working in a knee-jerk reaction and rushing bills through without the slow and prolonged deliberation for which our system was designed.

For all practical purposes our Founding Fathers didn't even consider the Senate as a lawmaking portion of the Legislative Branch.  They were the foil to the much more imperative desires of the House of Representatives, which only have two years to do the will of the people.  And we've seen what happens when laws get enacted without due deliberation.  I don't believe the Founding Fathers even foresaw a situation where one party held all the political power, primarily because most didn't want a system made up of political parties.  However, they did design the system so that, at the least, it had the opportunity to correct itself within the next few election cycles.

Our problem is that this "righting of the ship" is too slow of a process in comparison to how quickly life continues to present problems.  On the other side of the coin is a process that goes too quickly and without proper analysis of just what the process might produce.

For instance, I'm not certain whether Hurricane Katrina did more damage than the throwing away of $200 Billion in failed rebuilding efforts by a   majority Republican government to a bunch of old boy crony sole source contractors ripping Millions of Dollars out of the taxpayer's pockets without providing any of the services they were contracted to conduct.

And how can I be certain?  We have seen no proof, and the lack of clarity goes all the way back to contract participation in both Afghanistan and Iraq, where Billions of Dollars have gone missing.

The point of all these seemingly disparate facts is that we have become lax on our assessment of what this country needs to be and how it needs to do it.

So we lock onto some candidate or the other hoping that some problem doesn't pop up so we have to reassess our possibilities.  Americans now seem to want to have the job of protecting democracy become another task to do on Thursday, like putting out the trash.

Since I can't find any reason to suppose that the people are really paying attention to the quality of the Republican Presidential field, I have to conclude that they really don't care about who is the candidate, just that he is a Republican.

Well, it is unlikely that just any Republican will beat President Obama.

Let's take a look at the Perry idea that all Foreign Aid starts at Zero.  What a patently stupid idea, much less that as President, he doesn't control the purse strings.

And this is what really bugs me no end.  It appears to me that none of the Republican candidates, Mitt included, actually know what the responsibilities of the President really are.  Nor do they realize that the world is changing around them so fast that when McCain had a possible handle on the Presidency, the financial crisis happened, and he didn't even notice.  The dynamics of the race were changed, and John McCain made the wrong assessment, claims of suspending his run, and came away looking like these guys that stand on a stage all too often spouting ill conceived bull they would never be able to accomplish.

First of all, all they say they will accomplish won't actually get the job done, so they will have failed on day one, minute one because they didn't recognize the severity of the problem.

Secondly there are no "do overs" once you have become President.  To move an entire country of 310 Million people in a particular direction becomes an albatross around your neck if that direction proves to be unpopular.  On top of that, if the direction you take the country in is contrary to what the country, since its founding, goes against the face America shows to the world, you lose again.

George W. Bush did a pretty good job of defining Americans against the world with his "with us or against us" speech, which most of the world did not like.  That and the membership of Bush's inner circle's participation in the Project for a New American Century's policies in terms of empire didn't sit right with Europe when they were trying to create a new European Community.

As the rest of the West is trying to create an environment without war, some Americans, all Republicans, are suggesting that we will create a new empire and have done so since 1997.

And we're somehow placing any bets ON these people?  They not only got it wrong in creating a new empire (and they tried, didn't they), they didn't realize that we were over-extending our ability to pay for the concept of conquest, for an Empire only conquers.

And yet still the question stands.  Who, of these Republican candidates, would Charles DeGaulle have answered that 3 AM call?  Surely nothing as hefty as being the President of the United States would make a difference if any of these current candidates got into office.

They are so delusional they believe America is still the strongest country in the world, but they don't realize that the rest of the world will judge how strong America is by the person we elect to put a face to the world.

Comments

[Bill Perkins]

How consistently wrong can one person be. I'd state specifics but you never address them, and you never state what the corrective action is--because you have no clue. Easier to just throw mud than to take charge and correct the problem, right.

[Roger W. Norman]

You are a hard taskmaster, Bill Perkins.

My best bet is that you only come to this site to criticize me, and that's OK.

But why must I actually address your comments?

If my articles don't speak for themselves, then you have no reason to continue to try to argue with me.