As Election Night turned into the Wednesday Hangover, America braced itself for an expected but nonetheless dramatic power shift in Washington.  I, for one, spent the Election Day haggling with the Los Angeles voting administrators over absentee ballot delivery and was unable to get it sorted out in time; consoled by a sunlit race through the vineyards of Sonoma for an afternoon with the best wines on earth.  Nonetheless, many of California's important decisions seemed to be gravitating towards sensibility, namely the misbegotten oil tax proposition and the strengthening of sex offender registration laws.

However, I failed to find any jubilation in the early morning capitulation of Republican candidates in the senatorial races of Montana and Virginia.  Though political campaigning in America has scarcely evolved from the no-holds-barred affairs of the early 1800's, a full reversion to the baseless attacks and paper-thin allegations of those days is fully underway.  Case in point-  man as political animal can find no better a poster-child than one Nancy Pelosi, Speaker-Elect of the House of Representatives.  There can be few others in the annals of public service to our nation, who have found such joy and satisfaction in privately belittling and undermining political opponents and publicly understating and often blatantly ignoring the true economic and social problems of the center than Ms. Pelosi.  But piling on the new Speaker-Elect makes for such drab blogivision that I am forced to leave that low hanging fruit to die on the vine, as will the rest of the public's short-lived faith in anything 'progressive' coming out of the 'progressive' Democratic leadership.  They are the same stuffed suits who have long-championed the slow but methodical erosion of American traditions and values, and have fought, in their minds, for the 'little man', whilst ignoring the vast majority of Americans and their political, social and economic needs almost wholesale.

Rather, I would like to explore the fast-approaching landscape of the 2008 Presidential Election, and the maturing field of contenders that will present themselves, well, more aptly, expose themselves, for the media vultures and their anesthetized minions to pick, scratch and claw over, until the choice of least resistance is achieved, and the most ambivalent, yet supremely unqualified, candidate finds a four-year sabbatical from campaign life in the warm confines of 1600 Penn.

The GOP was, admittedly, late in separating itself from the power-drunk escapades of the Bush Administration, and that tactical flaw translated into a narrow loss of both chambers of Congress.  That mistake CANNOT be repeated if there is any hope of securing the White House for the trudging elephants two years hence.  Men like Romney, McCain and ostensibly Sir Rudy, must quickly and succinctly paint themselves into a corner as FAR away from the Bush-brand of conservatism as possible.  THEN, that corner must be reconfigured and reconstituted into something resolutely and diametrically opposed to the likely center-left position on most issues that Lady Hillary will assume going into the fall of 2007, when her long marathon to her husband's former office commences. 

There will have to be a difference in candidates, from their appearance and body language (attributes which serve no purpose in the trenches of domestic and foreign policy execution) to their elaborated positions and platforms on issues of the day (namely Iraq, abortion, energy and personal income).  Characteristically, Hillary has hoisted the healthcare banner once more.  Above the blood-soaked battlefields of American politics, she begins to hang her hat on a precarious precipice already.  Except this time, the best the pro-business (read: Republican) set can counter with is highly-efficient and cost-effective employer sponsored plans....that simply require you to fly to Myanmar for a mole removal.  Yes, this is an extreme scenario of positions and their potential effects on the working or retired American.  HOWEVER, I would caution any GOP candidate to bear these battle lines in mind.  The Democratic Party will push hard and fast for a universal healthcare program as a cornerstone of its domestic agenda come 2007.  The tug-of-war between outright socialism and no-holds-barred capitalism will begin when the new Congress opens in January and unless a reasonable and viable alternative to Lady Hillary's "Canada South" plan is formulated by the RNC leadership and minority congressional leaders, the public will only hear one side of the debate, in a consistent, loud and media-endorsed cacophony.  The full cost of socialist healthcare or socialist retirement funding or socialist employment is rarely if ever debated in American political discourse.  The holes in the economic argument for socialist programs need to be identified and harped on by the GOP in order to frame the discussion in a succinct, and more truthful, manner.  The fact is that the great amount of employment, benefits and healthcare that this nation's workers enjoy come from the toil and personal risk taken on by small and medium-sized private business owners.  Infringing on their ability to build and accumulate wealth has a negative multiplier effect on the very constituencies the Democratic Party is trying to retain and expand by promising government-imposed solutions that will be funded only until businesses say 'no more' or silently evaporate (along with the jobs they provide).  Sending your employees' spouses to Mexico for mammograms is no solution either, but this is where creativity, and (GASP!) ingenuity must be exercised by the GOP in order to address the nation's most painful shortcomings(affordable healthcare, reasonable retirement incomes, homeownership prospects, sustained employment) in a manner that does not pit the government as caretaker for an even GREATER subset of the population.

Our nation is, at the risk of sounding repetitive and conventional, at an historical crossroads.  We are challenged by stateless terrorists, their state sponsors, old and new enemies and even our own allies, on every front imaginable.  The American Way is being tested and stressed, and our response to that resistance must be handled in a way that is orders of magnitude better and more comprehensive than the simpleton responses fabricated by the current administration.  Bush Republicanism is dead.  That is a confirmed kill.  But, the momentum for the New Republican movement (anti-terror, anti-illegal immigration, pro-life, pro-security, pro-economic growth, pro-globalization) has yet to take hold.  The Tancredo-led resistance to open borders must be followed up with a grassroots effort at the local level, to spell out, in no uncertain terms, the perils of porous borders, and the economic impact on current and future taxpayers of the current administration's (and Democratic Party's) open-borders stance.  More voters in exchange for citizenship is an unbalanced deal akin to the one taken by the Lenape Indians, who swapped the island of Manhattan for 24 bucks worth of Dutch contraband.  To prevent America from getting "Lenaped", we must be resolute and unwavering in keeping our borders open to those who embrace our culture, religion, work ethics and general societal principles.  Those that don't, regardless of how destitute and oppressed (by nations who fail to assume ANY responsibility for the economic and social welfare of their own), should not be allowed free reign within our borders.  The net effect of illegal immigration since Reagan's Amnesty of 1986 is negative to the tune of almost a trillion dollars.  This nation can hardly afford a multiple of that sort of economic bleed, given the competitive pressures all businesses and workers face in a globalized market.

My suggestion for the GOP set seeking the nomination in 2008 is to identify yourself, your campaign and your vision with what the average TAXPAYER is experiencing..  The vision must be comprehensive, yet succinct.  Tell us how energy prices will be stable for the next 5-10 years and how you intend to accomplish that with some reasonable expectation of success.  Tell us, before you're elected, how the best and brightest ideas in the far corners of research and industry will make it to the forefront of your policymaking, and nationalized (such as biodiesel, adult stem-cell research, fetus-preserving stem-cell research, solar and geothermal science for the home). 

The nation has, today, at its fingertips, more information and access to fact or fiction behind presidential statements than at any point in American history.  The working taxpayer knows what sounds legitimate and what they've already heard before.  The duping of America that may have been commonplace in years past will not be so easy to pull off in the next presidential campaign.  We are all cognizant of the dangers in the Mid-East and Pacific Rim, of the threats at our borders, of the financial headstand each of us has to make to even keep up with the prosperity previous generations enjoyed.  We know where our pain points are, and could be; what we don't know is who is competent and astute enough to pull the solutions off.  There is a great danger of Americans, going to the polls, and now, for the third time in a row, voting in a candidate whose best qualification and attribute is 'he sucked less than the other guy'.  That's not a clear and universal mandate.  And that is what this nation is seeking, today and more importantly, in the new century:  leadership that we are confident in, comfortable in supporting and excited about.  The elixir of such leadership has propelled economies to great heights and has achieved miraculous feats on social and foreign affairs issues in the past (the New Deal, Voter/Civil Rights Acts, Fall of Communism).  We should soon tire of the mediocre, of the uncharismatic, of the ill-equipped, the unprepared, the rudderless and the error-prone.  It's time we demand the cream of the crop for public service, not just another retread of the pilferers, pranks and pitfalls of the past.


RAFFY J. OHANNESIAN
LOS ANGELES, CA


Our country's honor calls upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion; and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world.
~ George Washington