Voting for a Maybe President

Thanks to television and the advent of polling, we have popularity contests, not presidential elections. Whoever has the most marketing money wins. Maybe there wasn’t much of a choice in this presidential election.

Senator Mike Gravel, a 2008 presidential contender and former Senator from Alaska was kicked out of the debates because the networks said he didn’t raise enough in campaign funds. At one of the early presidential debates Brian Williams treated Senator Gravel like a “potted plant” and asked him no questions at all.

This was unfortunate for us because Senator Gravel was instrumental in helping bring to light the Pentagon Papers; proof that showed all the lies the Pentagon foisted on the public to support the war in Vietnam. What are the chances of us getting a look at any of the Iraq or Afghanistan papers now?

In his book “The Kingmakers” Gravel brings to light president elect Obama’s ‘no-show’ on the vote to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. With today’s media there was more emphasis placed on Obama’s association with William Ayers than his no-show vote.

Fortunately for us even though we don’t hear about them, there were people inside the intelligence agencies who made it known that they were willing to go to jail if the Government didn’t release the 2006 NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) report detailing that Iran had already dismantled their nuclear weapons facilities in 2003. If it hadn’t been for the brave Americans inside our intelligence agencies maybe that no show vote could possibly have brought us to war with Iran.

When his friend Theodore Roosevelt was elected president, Henry Adams said “Power is poison. It’s effects on presidents has always been tragic, chiefly an almost insane reaction at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bear the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carrion.”

Maybe in this historic time with this first African-American president, there is a chance president elect Obama can keep the power hounds and wolves at bay, let’s hope so.