Mr. President

It is a tribute to George Washington that given his popularity, the acclamation of his peers and colleagues, and their encouragement for him to start a royal line in the North American continent after the revolution against England, that he would graciously decline the offer.

It is a tribute to the framers of the Constitution that they saw the need to balance the powers undergirding three distinct processes in human life—the sustaining dynamic that paid attention to economic resources, production and distribution; the regulating dynamic that focused on political order, justice and welfare; and the meaning-giving dynamic that guarded cultural wisdom, symbol, and style. The U.S. Congress became the deliberative body that enjoined the Executive Offices headed by the President to faithfully implement its legislation, and heeded the Judiciary which adjudicated any unclarities over mandated or decreed provisions of the law.

The foresworn imperial character of the Office of the President remains a great temptation to its occupants. In my lifetime,

* Dwight D. Eisenhower gave it a military touch sans the tradition of Caesar but ending with a critic on his own household over the nascent threat on the political order by the Military-Industrial Complex.

* John F. Kennedy gave the office the aura of Camelot, ushering a momentary spring of liberal arts creativity, a broadening of the ecumené, and an extolling of America’s cultural diversity, before his untimely demise turned into a general malaise in the summer of our discontent.

* Lyndon B. Johnson imposed the bullying force of his native Texan sense of Greatness but found his resources thinly spread between two wars he dearly fought—Vietnam and Poverty, sacrificing the gains on Civil Rights he uncharacteristically pursued coming from a Confederate State.

* Richard M. Nixon successfully pursued peace in foreign relations but failed to supervise closely his minions extending the inquisitorial tentacles of the intelligence gathering functions of his office into domestic affairs, leaving too many fingerprints on the thresholds of Watergate, and was alleged to have participated in the cover-up upon discovery of a mysteriously erased previously recorded Oval office tape.

* Jimmy Carter preached and pontificated on the virtues of the peanut gallery but lost the majesty of the presidential office on the cobblestones of Persepolis while the Imams of Teheran were honing their Jihad politics along narrowly defined Koranic lines; got mired micro-managing the schedule of the White House hired help and users of the tennis court. • Ronald Reagan brought a new fondness to the office but acted out too well the Hollywood celluloid sense of royalty, transforming the State of the Union address into primetime entertainment, elevating virtual perceptions and remembered movie lines into policy eagerly pursued in CONTRAvention by the likes of Major Oliver North, USMC.

* George H. W. Bush sought a kinder and gentler America but almost instigated a revolt of the Generals when he desisted from pursuing Kuwait’s oil conflagrant Saddam Hussein into the famed Land between Two Rivers when he was most vulnerable.

* William J. Clinton’s savvy on public policy and proletarian populism got grossly tarnished in the Oval Office on his total disregard of Presidential protocol when he allegedly inserted a forbidden Cuban cigar into the White House internship program.

Now, George W. Bush whose fresh common man demeanor has led the nation in the kingly pursuit of Armageddon, first, settling a score with the Mesopotamian House of Saddam, then, steering in the prophesized coming reign of a notable descendant of the Royal House of David of Ancient Israel. In the process, he has gone further than what the Nixon White House even dared to imagine in the invasion of citizens’ privacy without legal sanctions. He has disregarded critical provisions of international standards we helped define in the treatment of prisoners and combatants, in the protection of human rights and the promotion of human decency..

A presently embarrassed presidency increasingly becoming at once belligerent in seeing at every turn a trace of Al-Qaeda, and bellicose in the grand crusade against terrorism instigated by ‘misguided’ followers of Mohammed, is causing an economist friend to seriously consider pulling out his Yankee $s to another currency, perhaps, the euro, ¥uan, or the won. My friend is alarmingly going even further to speculate that a declaration of Martial Law before the end of George W’s term is a distinct possibility!

Sam Smith wrote in the Progressive Review an article titled “Blowin in the Wind of Cultural Decay” which chronicles the entropic final days not only of the empire but of the culture. Smith quotes from Jefferson whose haunting words addresses the current violation of rights perpetuated by the White House: “From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.”

Smith concludes, “What is tragic about the disintegration of American culture is the promise it held, the freedoms it created, the hope it sustained. The single common thread behind the forces that led to its collapse was greed: national greed, economic greed, lust for a greater audience ….”

The American century of Teddy Roosevelt, of innocence on the march towards manifest destiny, is no more. And in my memory, we’ve sure come a long way from the purring Hollywood kitten on stage singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” to the heavy cadence of virtual armored personnel humming the tune of “Onward Christian Soldier, Marching Us To War,” in short distance from the Rose Garden with top White House officials fanatically leading the parade!

While it may be too soon to write a Requiem to American Culture, the radical changes that is occurring in the Oval Office may perhaps require more than just a dosage of republican review but a full application of democratic scrutiny. Distanced from the center of power, the dotted isles of Western Pacific may not account for much, but we have in the last thirty some years joined the journey of this social experiment called the United States of America, and in the collapse of any culture, there are always those who appropriate certain of its practices for posterity. What might those be for us?

Meanwhile, a canary whispered that perhaps, it is time to consider a Ms. President. That’s a thought!

* * *

Vergara is a Social Studies 6th grade teacher at San Vicente Elementary School