Yuckster in Chief

Letter from the Editor

The concept of leadership is fairly simple, but its practice seems to elude everyone who manages to become an elected official.

World events are bringing the United States to a crucial juncture in her history, but everywhere I turn I find … nothing. Where are our leaders?

Where is our Winston Churchill?

Where is our General Patton?

Where is our President Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson or John F. Kennedy?

Where is someone who can stand at a podium and move a people to a common goal?

I can’t even listen to politicians speak anymore. Every time Nancy Pelosi gets in front of a microphone, I feel my IQ plummet. Every time President Bush starts joking around when someone actually asks him a tough question, I want to scream.

The United States doesn’t need a Yuckster in Chief right now.

I don’t want my president to sound like some average Joe who chanced upon the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. I would enjoy it if my country’s leader spoke like an intelligent, powerful man.

I love history, and the ability of past leaders to use the spoken word is truly astounding. The inability of today’s “leaders” to speak to our nation is despicable.

Harry Reid, the genius who stood in front of cameras and proclaimed “the war is lost,” probably would have done well to have read General Patton’s speech to his Third Army before D-Day:

“Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.”

Harry Reid, you’re a loser. Even if you’re correct, you’re still a loser.

President Bush and his chief advisors ignored military leaders and screwed up Iraq beyond repair, but I don’t want to hear some elected loser proclaim to the world that my country lost anything. I want someone to stand up and act like the second coming of Winston Churchill.

“…What is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea and air. War with all our might … What is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory! Victory at all costs! Victory in spite of all terrors. Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory, there is no survival.”

President Bush pretended to be a leader long enough to earn a second term, but now he’s sad punchline. He might as well have a parrot show up for his press briefings.

“Stay the course! Stay the course!”

What course, Mr. President? Americans hate to lose, remember? I want my vote back, but there wasn’t anyone better, anyway.

As one of the most powerful people on the planet, don’t you think the president could find a speech writer that could - maybe - craft something that could touch our hearts, that could unify us? At this point, I wouldn’t even care if President Bush simply read Woodrow Wilson’s speech to Congress from April 2, 1917, in which he took the U.S. into World War I:

“There is one choice that we cannot make, we are incapable of making: We will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs: they cut to the very roots of human life….

“But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest to our hearts - for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concern of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world at last free.”

I’d long for the 2008 elections, but the field of presidential wannabes is uninspiring to say the least. Everything they say is substance-free and smacks of weakness.

America can only withstand terrible leadership for so long. Even the sturdiest of ships can find itself at the bottom of the sea if the captain is inept.

Someone out there has got to be able to stand in front of a nation - especially at this vital time in our history - and forcefully speak the truth.

Personally, I’d be much more willing to follow someone who could look me in the eye and say: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the United States were to last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

We’re all waiting.