It's time to elect another President of the United States.Every four years we get to see how the man in charge is doing and whether or not we need to make a change. If we believe in him we give him a second term but no more. President Obama, our first black president is at the end of his terms. He has done an excellent job in my opinions faced with the crisis that our country faced when he took over. We were in a deep recession, the banking and financial institutions along with major corporations where crumbling, with massive unemployment, weather and man made catastrophes, along with two wars going on outside our country and terrorism on the rise. Things are better even now under his leadership even with the obstruction from the other major political party and racism which still soundly exists in our country. I believe he will go down as one of our great presidents, who brought us back from the brink and tried to help our people with things like the Affordable Health Care Act and extracting our troops from war zones, and harms way. Only history will tell and those who write it.
This years election is one for the ages, with the first woman nominated by the Democrats, Hillary Clinton, our current Secretary of State. Hillary has been involved in politics since her husband Bill was President. She later became a Senator for New York, and after losing to President Obama in a heated contest in 2012, she worked with him as Secretary of State. Recently she has been entangled in several controversies, including the handling of a terrorist attack in Benghazi where several Americans were killed and the use of a personal cell phone for communications while at the State Department. Nevertheless she is truly a qualified candidate. The public has been bombarded with media attacking her honesty and trust issues.
On the other side the Republicans started out with no major flag bearer and sixteen individuals vying for the nomination. Governors, mayors, congressmen, a woman executive, a surgeon, and a millionaire named Donald Trump. After all the dust cleared the businessman and millionaire Donald Trump had dispatched all the others with his bombastic and in your face approached during the debates and campaign. It told the American people that he would make America Great Again, just as he had made his businesses great. He would build a wall to keep immigrants from Mexico out, no Muslims allowed into the country, get out of NATO if the other nations didn't pay their fair share, and bomb the hell out of ISIS. He would bring jobs back and businesses would grow and stop all this waste of money by the government by shutting down regulatory agencies. People were angry about how things are and many fell for this in your face approach. No matter that he talked down to women, people of color, Muslims, and anyone who didn't agree or listen to him. A first class bully by many accounts with little political knowledge or moral values. Once he got rolling even his own party couldn't reel him in or follow some of their established ideology.
To say the least this guy is very scary to the majority of people. He talked about how terrible the country is now and that the people in charge don"t know what they are doing. But he has no idea of how to fix things and when asked will only state that he is the only man to do it, and we should believe him. His temperament is one of a soft skinned narcissist who can be prodded by a tweet or a statement from an opponent. It scares me that he would be running our military or be the one making decisions for millions of people and our future.
I recently meet a could from Sweden while on vacation and they asked me what I thought about Trump and if he could win. They have been following the election and are also scared that a person who is talking about hate and separatism could even be in the running. I felt a sense of embarrassment but had to say that our country is fragmented and it appears that there is a section that has embraced this conduct and philosophy. I told them that I hoped that the overall population did not and at the end of the day see that we can only get better by working together, both in house and globally. Many countries consider the United States and the leader of the free world and to suggest as Donald Trump has, that we are more like a third world country now and need a change is frightening to everyone. President Obama has done a great job of bringing our country back to prominence after the Bush presidency broke us away from many allies in his quest for war in Iraq. He has reached out to the world for better relations, with Cuba after over half a century, Iran deal to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons peacefully, our neighbors Canada & Mexico, and Europe.
The moral compass of America is at stake. Will we vote for a President who will bring us together and be concerned with all our citizens or one that is out to show himself off and fend for those who already have wealth and power, will isolating the poor and other. in God we trust is on our money and in our constitution but it has been pushed further and further out of out thought processes and the institutions which have made our country great up to this time. I am not naive enough to believe that democracy can fail here in the United States of America, just as other ideologies have failed throughout the centuries. We are still young and can accomplish a great deal more if we stay on the right path. Election 2016 will be a milestone towards that end.
