OOH LA LA, #63 GETS EARLY ELECTION DAY RELEASE

THE FIRST IN A SERIES ON THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY

EVERY LIFE DEFINED BY US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

When Americans vote, the whole world stands on heels to embrace the influence of the new President around the globe for better or for worse.

Even an incumbent President returned to office by the electorate may swing the political agenda of an entire nation and that country’s impact on a global world order with a new agenda for four more years. Those next four years are ‘nothing to lose’ years since reelection is not even a possibility.

The United States of America is an elephant that if rolling one way forces the entire world to roll in the same direction a bit, and if rolling the other way, the world becomes forced to roll in that direction a bit instead. 

The United States of America slowly, incrementally pulls the national and international agenda forward in a relentless fantastical march through the reality of a complicated world order.

The world’s working memory captures more United States Presidents than any other nation’s heads of state in a myopic sort of way. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton and Bush all have special meaning to people around the world in different nations for different reasons, even more so if you are strolling beside the reflecting pool in the National Mall in Washington D.C. than if window shopping along the Magnificent Mile in Chicago or under the hot sun in a strip mall in Phoenix.

When America voted Black, the whole world leaned left from the middle toward inclusion. Germany accepted over a million refugees from the rage fueled 9/11 Wars.

United States President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize without yet having barely had a chance to exercise any global power. Oslo was so eager to crown the first Black Prince from America since Martin Luther King Jr. that the Nobel Prize Committee overlooked any possible embarrassment over the prematurity of the award.

OF COURSE EVERYONE INCLUDING THE NORWEGIANS OVERLOOKED THE REAL CONUNDRUM INVOLVED

Of course, everyone including the Norwegians overlooked the real conundrum involved, since many political pundits believed that Bill Clinton was the first ‘black’ President when he became President in 1993, playing saxophone, and talking southern like he was from the South, and liking nothing better to eat for supper than ham, corn bread, collard greens, mashed potatoes, lima beans, fruit pie and lots of iced tea at Buddy and Ollie’s.

When Ronald Reagan called out the Russians, the Berlin Wall fell.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt created a new social contract to end the Great Depression, a lot of other people thought that social economic contract was a good idea.

When Abraham Lincoln ended slavery, the trade in cotton shifted to Egypt and India.

When George Washington crossed the Delaware on December 26, 1976 during the American Revolutionary War, and then became President of a Republic from April 1789 to March 1797, the French did the same thousands of miles away from May 1789 to November 1799.

The American influence is often remembered before that of post war German Chancellor Konrad Adenaur, Russia’s Nakita Kruschev, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, all of whom may have also had lasting impact on geopolitics.

The American block of popular consciousness is even more effective against South Americans. The President of Mexico is almost inconsequential, even though the border with the United States is a crucial point of interest domestically, and a lot of drugs and cartel money come through the southern border destined for Miami and the North States like New York.

The world thinks of singular names to define an age dominated politically, culturally and militarily by America for a century – that’s if you are centered from the heart of western democracy at NBC Studios and Rockefeller Center. 

But in many respects the name is merely a team leader with many figures behind the scenes in support of the Presidential Office transitioning from Presidency to Presidency as long as the political party remains consistent.

Presidential influencers jump ship from public service to corporate America between Presidential elections with many Americans not being all that wiser. 

The political establishment can be rather entrenched with a separation of powers between the Executive Office of the President and Congress, as well as the Judiciary and State Legislatures, but at the same time, everything political is interconnected to achieve a decidedly American purpose from electoral mandate to electoral mandate.

The President appoints the Judiciary, not just the highest court in the land, but many lower courts throughout the nation that stay and decide for life regardless of the result of the next political consensus.

And Congress refreshes every two years depending on the failures and successes of a President elected every four. Politics is a bit of a revolving door in America that stays put on a pivoting shaft despite the turbulent times and the sheer volume of people slipping through from Pennsylvania Avenue to the front desk.

Militarily, the President can hold tight the reigns of Generals in the field. And sometimes Generals can become Presidents, like George Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower. President Abraham Lincoln was not a Field General, but he almost single handedly marshaled a nation toward Civil War, at least that’s how the legend is told after over a century and a half since his assassination.

When the Generals do not have direct political power, their experience in all matters military  are relied on very very close to political power, such as General Colin Powell serving under President George W. Bush as Secretary of State and under President Ronald Reagan as National Security Advisor.

The reality of America constantly engaged in war is not lost on the International Community. Syria fell despite Obama’s Peace Prize, and Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait have all fallen under pressure from the American military, with revolution spreading like dominoes through Libya, Egypt and Yemen without there being just a coincidence.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency has formidable power when influencing geopolitical events, with the President giving substantial direction to the agency conducting covert surveillance and military operations in the interests of America.

President Donald Trump deescalated conflict, while President Obama eliminated America’s enemies by assassinating terrorist cell leaders. The Kennedy Administration used the CIA to conduct psychological warfare during the Cold War and to more directly influence coups in non-democratic regimes of great influence to the stability of regions.

REAGAN, LIKE A MOVIE PRODUCER, SIMPLY OUTSPENT EVERYONE ELSE.

Reagan, like a movie producer, simply outspent everyone else.

The result is that when America votes, the whole world cannot help but to watch and listen – standing ready like a matador waiting to gage the veracity of the bull let lose through the gate by the American people.

One nuanced photograph captures Bill Clinton in the Rose Garden all cued up, crooning to see US President John F. Kennedy on July 24, 1963. Clinton was just a white boy from Arkansas at the time, just a few days shy of his 18^th birthday, waiting to shake the President’s hand outside the Oval Office.

Clinton describes childhood abuse in the home of an alcoholic as crafting his need to succeed, in his autobiography, My Life (2004).

Politics for Clinton started as a young boy breaking his leg and being hospitalized until the leg mended, truant from school, but nonetheless, liking all the attention he got from people visiting him in the hospital.

Another defining moment for Clinton was the anti-segregation movement in his home town. The Little Rock Nine (1957) began the integration of Blacks into white high schools in Arkansas at the Central High School in Little Rock.

President William J. Clinton was popular for eight years, which almost carried his Vice President Al Gore into the Presidency for another four years after Clinton hit his two term limit.

US President Ronald Reagan was so popular in the United States and around the word that he may still be on the marque except for his advancing age and the fixed term limits brought in by the US Congress after President Franklin D. Roosevelt had held office part way through his fourth four-year term until his death in April of 1945.

But as early as February 27, 1951, when the Twenty-Second Amendment to the US Constitution was passed limiting Presidents to two four-year terms, power had become so concentrated in Washington that the last thing America and the world needed was a democratic dictator for life running the global power network in the United States.

US President Dwight D. Eisenhower had been the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expedition Force in Europe that brought an end to World War II. By the time Eisenhower had finished the second term of his Presidency in 1961, he thought fit to warn Americans and the world about the Military Industrial Complex he had himself developed while in office.

Tricky Dick got around term limits as Vice President to Eisenhower for eight years and then two terms as President until resigning before his time was up on August 9, 1974. Everyone realized as early as his first term that term limits were meant for Presidents like Richard Nixon despite his popularity.

Nixon had won the popular vote, but he had also escalated the Vietnam War from 1968 until everyone just about had enough death in Southeast Asia. Nixon also ran a dirty tricks operation out of the White House, using his own people instead of relying on and trusting the handy work of the US Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Nixon had brought the Executive Office into disrepute, but he later sold a lot of copies of his memoir and nine other books he had authored since leaving the Oval Office in shame.

Career politicians are common in the Oval Office. Bush Jr, Clinton, Reagan and Carter had been State Governors before becoming President. The Kennedy family were Senators and continue to find value in public service through political office as opposed to public service through philanthropic endeavors, although I am sure they do that as well.

The French know how world dynamics can simultaneously change and stay the same with a change in the American Presidency. French patriots helped the American revolutionaries oust the British in the War of Independence. Then the Americans helped the French kick back the Germans, not once but twice.

The Americans stayed around a bit after that last war, and helped turn back the tide of communism. Americans went to the conservative right of the political middle in the decades that followed, while the French went to the socialist left, and simply, in that matter of fact way for which the French are known, bluntly asked the Americans to leave French territory, thank you very much, in 1966.

The international community never knows quite exactly what the world will get, with politics being as politics may, in this election year like no other, a game of fictions, although some certainty does come with the political office. 

A Washington Insider cast out mid-term will likely author a tell-all book despite the confidentially clauses in the employment contract. And the outgoing President for sure has taken his notes with him on which to base a bestselling memoir and a seven figure speakers tour that lasts a good portion of an unofficial third term as political influencer.