With triumph comes malice

In these final weeks of 2012’s presidential campaigns, the constituency of both candidates has been polarized and demonstrated in all the presses, real and parody.  This election is a first in only one way.  It is exactly the same as every other in the modern era of televised campaigns.  It is pointed and heated and rife with scandal and guile.  Because say what you will about the politics of President Barack Obama, his first term was a landmark in the history of these United States.  He has been a Democratic Head of State, he officially won the war in the Middle East by sending troops into Osama Bin Laden’s compound, and he has been a positive representation of home, church and country.  About the man competing for the seat of the incumbent, he is wealthy; he is Mormon; he is from Massachusetts.

I am African-American and Native-American on either side of my family.  I am a cultural mixture of Ethiopian, Navajo, and Cherokee people from Texas, Missouri and Arkansas.  I’ve spent my whole life in the Midwest.  I’ve been to Orlando, Atlanta, Indianapolis, and Chicago.  I’ve lived in Kansas City, St. Louis, and of course Omaha.  I have no any interest in the challenger to the incumbent president.  He did not get any attention from me in his first campaign for president, he has not ignited any semblance of ardor in this 2012 effort, and I wonder how the G.O.P. has truly become so politically polarized as to have become literally, politically obsolete.

The glory days of the Republican Party could be legitimately argued to be the election of Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in 1980.  Ronald Reagan’s terms in office were a spectacle of media, celebrity, and power.  He beat the Russians in the Cold War.  He brought down the Berlin Wall.  He started a real life Star Wars.  Ronald Reagan did everything a true conservative president should do in office and on top of it all, once served in the Army and Air Force and was a Hollywood movie star.  If you were to make a top ten list of awesome presidents in United States history, Ronald Reagan should be on that list somewhere.  
The day the Republican Party must have fallen gravely ill was the first month of January 1989, when George H. Bush became the 41st president.  Like the laser disk or 8-track tape player, the Grand Old Party's ultimate exodus from modern life must have been on the horizon, as it had become almost too uniquely partisan to be a legitimate political entity.  It now more resembles a corporate monopoly or a hate group.  I mean all of this only for the sake of argument of course.  I am not a political science guy.  I am a journalism guy.  I am merely reporting facts in an opinion story.

Also on our “Top Ten Presidents” list is President Barrack Obama.  Each day of his presidency may move him up or down a slot or two on that proverbial list in the history books of an alternate future, but the names George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy demand the company of Reagan and Obama in their company.  The fact is this proverbial list of great leaders elected to govern our country is exactly what many people base their lives upon, and those people are called true patriots.  The first term of our incumbent president was a triumph.  And of course, with triumph comes malice.  The failures of the systems make all politics possible to begin.  And then, if at first you don’t succeed to be president of the United States of America, you probably should not expect to the next time, either.