[Ascend soap box]
The movie “Dave” was on TV tonight, and listening to Kevin Kline give a speech about creating jobs and instilling hope and pride in people provided quite a contrast to Bush’s speech today threatening Syria. Imagine the power for good you would have if you were President of this country — JFK decided to put a man on the moon, and because he was President the country followed him and less than ten years later Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Teddy Roosevelt believed in conservation, and before his term ended there were three new national parks, triple the amount of protected forests, fifty-one new wildlife refuges, and over a dozen new national monuments including the Grand Canyon. Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman believed that wars could be prevented by providing a forum for countries to discuss their differences, and the League of Nations and United Nations were created. The current President had an enormous opportunity after September 11th — even anti-American countries like Libya were suddenly sympathetic to the US, and the entire Arab world was for the first time asking us to sit down with them to discuss peace. The President chose to lead the country in a different direction, and I can’t help but feel that because of his decision we missed out on what could have been another great undertaking by one of America’s leaders.
[Descend soap box]