Come Nov. 5, either Barack Obama or John McCain will be President-elect of the United States. Our president. My president. President of Democrats, Republicans and independents. After a drawn out campaign and vicious attacks, it is time for national unity.
America has its share of problems, and we realize it. According to a CBS/ItNew York Times poll, 85 percent of Americans think our nation is on the wrong track. We need to restore national values which have been abandoned. Secret prisons (including the gulag at Guantanamo) and torture exercises must be immediately eliminated. We must restore habeas corpus and warrants for wiretapping. We must instill a culture of fiscal responsibility from Joe the Plumber to the federal budget. We must tighten our belts. Whoever wins the election must deal with long term financial nightmares such as Social Security and Medicare. He must streamline military funding. Taxes are not an intrinsic evil nor are they patriotic duty; they are simply the cost for living in the society we want. Social Security, Medicare and the armed forces are all programs which are widely supported, but they also are the three largest parts of the federal budget. All three must be redefined and redeployed in order to best suit American interests.
Abroad, there are very delicate situations which require thoughtful and assertive responses. If major military forces are still in Iraq by the next presidential election, the winner does not deserve a second term. We must readopt a realist foreign policy the likes of which the first Bush administration enforced. Possible future conflicts need a foreign policy driven by facts and rationality, not ideology. We must realize that we are part of a community of nations sharing this earth. There are other powers competing for the hearts and minds of the planet. The United States cannot be seen as just spreading misery and pain, but spreading opportunity and progress.
As a part of sharing this earth, we must care for it. With the current environmental crisis, the winner’s administration must implement alternative cost effective energies by 2012, with solar, wind and nuclear power sources as considerations. We must reduce our dependence on both foreign and polluting energies. Education is the key to unlocking these technologies and is the best investment we can make. America is going to have either its first black president or female vice president. This is leap forward for equality in our country. Race, gender, creed, economic standing and sexual orientation should play no part in determining what one can or cannot do. Possible laws like California’s Proposition Eight, which states that marriage is between a man and a woman, only further divide us as a people. We must put an end to any attempts to segment America into red or blue. There is only one real America, and it is the land you and I both inhabit. E. pluribus unum.
