It's time to demand more from leaders

Lately, President Bush has lost not one but two confidants. Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales, his trusted underlings, have flown the coop to greener pastures.

There is no doubt in my mind that very soon they will be in positions to make millions of dollars.

And as the reader can see, I say "make," not "earn." Neither has earned a single cent in all the time he spent working for this president, who, coincidently, has also not earned his salary.

It would have been cheaper for Americans to let him play cowboy in Crawford than president in Washington.

And my sincere hope is to see him back in Texas for good, where he can do little harm to anyone except himself. He has done enough harm to the world, and it's about time for him to stop even if he still has one more year to go in his tenure.

I don't give two hoots about any of his underlings or how much income they can finagle for their services to special interests while in government. I do, however, dislike the idea of continuing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to a former president for doing a lousy job that has undermined the health, wealth and security of the United States.

The United States is in disarray, with its citizens disunited and turned against each other along religious, social or political criteria. Its economy is in tatters, plagued by mushrooming public and private debts, deficit spending, loss of industries and a decaying infrastructure. No one should be surprised at this state of affairs, for they are the hallmarks of post-World War II Republican Party rule.

As usual, Democrats will change much of that, and they will try to fix what the Republicans screw up but, unfortunately, the Republicans will come back to screw it up again. American economic recessions more often than not result from and follow Republican governments.

But putting all these issues aside, it is imperative in this globalized world to elect an American leadership that is well versed in international affairs, a leadership that has an understanding of world history, geography, politics and perhaps a foreign language or two. Americans must expect and demand more from their leaders than the current mediocrity.

President Bush will be forever linked to his failures and thus will fade away, because Americans do not like to be reminded of failures. He can't change that, but he can prevent more humiliation for the institution of the presidency.

First, Bush must not blame Iran for his screw-up in Iraq, nor use that as an excuse to involve the U.S. in another war. Political vacuums cannot exist, and the illegal invasion of Iraq created a political vacuum that Iran is much better suited to fill than the United States.
A little knowledge of power politics and the region's history would have been enough to put the brakes on any Middle Eastern adventure. Another policy of containment might need to be developed with a number of actors in the region, something the new president can figure out and develop.

Second, the president needs to stop, in word and in deed, his newfound support of dictatorships. Dictatorships breed radicalism in all its forms, and by supporting them, he will undermine his successor's ability to maneuver.

Third, he should tell the American people that he is sorry for letting them down, then follow that by keeping silent and spending as much time as he can in Crawford.