Okay, loyal readers. Time to dust off the political commentary again. And I’m not even going to make any further reference in this column to an unnamed right-wing wacko radio personality who was sent packing by the NFL in his attempt to buy a team.
But as is our custom in this country, even with the next state and federal election more than a year away, there’s no lack of confirmed candidates and those who are considering running for office.
On Friday, former Gov. Terry Branstad announced his retirement from the presidency of Des Moines University and his intention to tour the state and gauge whether he should run for a fifth term as governor. He would join a crowded Republican field of up to a half-dozen candidates. But most of them seem to have tired old ideas that might not work.
I supported Chet Culver when he ran for election. But he’s had a real tough couple of years and I have my suspicions that he might be in over his head in this job. Branstad’s announcement is interesting. I may not have always agreed with what he did while in office, but I voted for him, several times. Iowa is a small state, by comparison with some of our neighbors. If you are in the right place at the right time, you can sometimes have a quiet conversation with an elected official, even a sitting governor or a U.S. senator or congressman.
When Terry Branstad was our governor, I was privileged to have a one-on-one conversation with him a few times when I was still in Independence. In fact, we shared breakfast when he was still the lieutenant governor and running for the top spot. I found him to be a very sincere individual who would not dodge the tough issues.
As we move closer to the 2010 governor’s race, pay close attention to what the candidates say. Look for the candidates who appear to be secure enough in their own beliefs to buck the party line if need be, whether it is a Republican or Democrat.
Sen. Chuck Grassley seems to be poised to run for yet another term. I’ve had several opportunities to speak with him and he is also a sincere, down-to-earth individual. I suspect that not only is he one of the smartest senators we have when it comes to fiscal matters, he might be one of the hardest workers in Congress.
The Democrats have been frantically searching for a “secret weapon” to run against him, someone that might have good name recognition and not just some state legislator or local businessman from Des Moines. I caught a news report this week that suggested that the “secret weapon” could be former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack.
When asked about this report, she didn’t seem surprised and didn’t offer a direct answer, while leaving the door open to consider it. Earlier in this decade, when her husband, Tom, was our governor, she proved to be a real friend of the Belle Plaine Library and a frequent visitor to our elementary schools with her literacy campaign.
I would like to believe that Sen. Grassley appears to be against a lot of the spending proposals because he wants to sound a warning and knows that such things as health care reform might still succeed without his support. But I’m getting concerned that saying “no” is getting easier for him every day in an era when we need a disciplined, but progressive Congress.
Vilsack vs. Grassley could be an interesting race.
And finally, one more thought on the national political scene. When we elected President Obama last fall, a lot of us really believed that he would serve for eight enlightened years, freeing us from the stranglehold of the past. This is a prediction
I hope doesn’t come true. But at this point, it would not surprise me if he decided not to seek a second term, regardless of how successful he is in achieving meaningful health care reform, or fixing the financial mess or making progress in our war in Afghanistan.
Our president appears to be in great physical, mental and emotional condition. But he might sit down with his wife early in 2012 and they might both decide that the toll on their health and their family is just too much. I dearly hope this isn’t the case. Even the most ardent critics, at least those that truly love their country, would hope and pray he and our other national leaders could solve these huge problems.
Unfortunately, because of the world situation and our own cutthroat political climate, we might be entering an era of one-term presidents.
All this man has done since being elected has been to follow the lead of countless failed euro-socialist regimes. I have not the slightest clue how you or anyone else could have contemplated “eight enlightened years” with Obama at the helm. What did you base your hopes on? His words? Let me share something with you, that’s what politicians do! They speak! They use their words initially to get elected. Then, we all hope, they back those words up with action which in turn leads to subsequent elections. Obama did what politicians do. He spoke. He spoke well. He told everyone what they wanted to hear while the vilest of his supporters played on white guilt and an “anyone but Bush” platform. Despite the fact that Bush was ineligible to run.
At any rate, Obama had nothing in the way of experience or even a consistent voting record one could look to in order to determine what he really believed when not in front of a crowd from this group or that. For Pete’s sake, he’d barely been a senator for 2 years and prior to that was a “community organizer” in a city known for its crooked politics. During that time, he forged close ties with a national organization currently embroiled in a scandal involving its employees’ coaching folks on how to run an illegal enterprise on the tax payers’ bill. Not to mention it’s numerous voter fraud charges.
The man announced his candidacy at the home of William Ayres, a KNOWN terrorist. He’s appointed an admitted communist to his cabinet who later quit once evidence of his radical beliefs became public. He spent 20 years trusting his spiritual growth to an anti American, racist “pastor” and now that he can no longer associate with Reverend Wright for fear of what it would do to his image, he suddenly has no interest in going to church at all. He has appointed more Czars than Russia did in nearly three centuries. He has appointed a man who admittedly counseled a minor boy in the “best” way to conduct an inappropriate relationship with an adult man as our “safe school czar”. He seems convinced that his mere presence on the political scene should be enough to make the world’s dictators suddenly feel like playing nice. He’s stabbed our Eastern European allies in the back apparently just to take yet another swipe at his predecessor as I can see no other reason for him to do so. And, he’s clearly hell bent on government takeover of the health care industry. Of course he bills it a little differently but if you search just a bit you’ll find him recently on record saying that he foresees a period of transition lasting maybe 10-20 years after which private health care will be pushed out of existence by the federal government. AND, in response to his “fixing the financial mess” as you put it, Obama has spent more money in a couple fell swoops of his pen than any man, ever.
Of course, these are just of few of the historic changes we’ve seen in these first few “months of enlightenment” but you’re surely getting tired of reading facts you already know to be true. So I’ll simply ask you, which of Obama’s changes do you believe in? I’d really like to know where all the blind faith in this man comes from.
Thanks,
Thank you Steve Griffith. There are alot of us out here that believe like you. I hope we have a country left at the end of his 4 years.