The Presidency: Do You Really Want This Job?
About 45 or 46 years ago, President John F. Kennedy and Arizona GOP Sen. Barry
Goldwater had a private chat in the Oval Office. It was the time of Cold War,
civil rights, economic questions, and tension over Cuba and Berlin, among other
problems. All those and more faced the president, and Goldwater knew it.
Kennedy also knew Goldwater would in all likelihood be the Republican nominee in
1964. The two men, who had served in the Senate together and who respected each
other, had agreed to a series of one-on-one campaign debates. Then JFK
reportedly turned to Goldwater and deadpanned: “So you really want this (deleted
expletive) job.”
As we enter the homestretch of the 2008 presidential campaign, in listing the
even-worse problems Barack Obama or John McCain will face starting on Jan. 20,
Kennedy’s statement is a legitimate point to pose to both. Here’s some reasons
why:
* The economy. The economy sluggishly recovered from George W. Bush’s first
recession. Now we’re in the second Bush crash, and it’s worse. Joblessness is 6.1% and rising.
Unemployment or underemployment hits one of every nine workers. Incomes have
stagnated or declined, for all but the richest, for seven years.
For workers, the first Bush recession never really ended. And the gap between
the rich and the rest of us became a chasm. The top 1/10th of 1% of all earners
saw their compensation rise 324% since 2000 while the bottom 90% lost ground.
* The war(s). Compared to the wars the U.S. is fighting now, the Cold War
against the Soviet Union was relatively simple. We knew whom we were facing, we
knew where they were physically on the globe and ideologically in the realm of
ideas.
We roughly knew the size and numbers of their nuclear weaponry. As the Cuban
missile crisis showed, we found the Soviets, too, did not want to blow up the
world.
Fighting Islamic radicalism is another story. We know the ideology of the foe.
It’s set by Osama Bin Laden: Return to an absolute Islamic caliphate over a wide swath of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, defeat of the U.S. and
obliteration of Israel.
But physically, al-Qaeda and other radical Islamists are split into small
almost-autonomous cells in countries ranging from Spain to Britain to Iraq to
the Philippines to Pakistan. Bush says there’s a “center” in Iran, but his
credibility is shot. So is the readiness and availability of U.S. armed forces,
whom Bush has tied down in Iraq. Iran remains on the loose, and the radical
Islamists--Iran’s president included--make no secret of their desire to get and
use nuclear weapons. How do you fight that?
* An aging population. We‘re getting older as a country, and the number of
retirees will continue to swell, now that the leading edge of the “Baby Boom” is
turning 65. This poses all sorts of problems. Here are just a few, just for
starters:
Will there be enough workers to earn money, whose taxes can then support
government programs? What happens when Social Security’s payroll tax income,
plus bond interest, falls short of its outlays and it has to start cashing in its IOUs from the
federal government? Will there even be enough workers for the federal
government, given that its boomers are retiring? If we don’t pay our
doctors--through Medicare and Medicaid--enough and we don’t pay our nurses
enough, as private firms cut their pay to make hospitals and nursing homes
profitable, then who will care for our elderly?
* The government itself. The federal government is both deep in the red and
dysfunctional. The budget deficit this year will hit $407 billion, just short of
the all-time record, also set under Bush. The Department of Homeland Security, a
jury-rigged mass set up to ostensibly “protect” us against further al-Qaeda
attacks, among other things, is in chaos. Its immigration agents raid companies.
Its underpaid and overworked airport screeners bar little old ladies from
getting on planes because their names match those on an error-ridden “watch
list.” Its port security program, to prevent dangerous cargo-- such as bombs--from entering the U.S., is a shambles. And need we cite it on
Katrina?
Other federal agencies are in similar shape, just to a lesser degree. The Labor
Department doesn’t enforce job safety laws. Under GOPer Bush, it not only
doesn’t want to, but also doesn’t have enough people to do so. Bush’s Justice
Department has right-wing ideologues in career posts. Bush’s Defense Department
can’t keep track of its money, and plays political favorites in doling out
billions to contractors. And so on.
* Jobs. One reason the Machinists are striking Boeing has nothing to do with
pay: Virtually all of the sub-components of the wealthy aircraft company’s new
787 Dreamliner are built overseas. Only final assembly is in the U.S. The
high-tech engineering and white-collar jobs designing the plane followed the
blue-collar factory jobs to China and elsewhere. That’s like many other
white-collar jobs in the U.S., following the factory jobs to the cheap-labor
nations. It’s called globalization.
There are many more problems we could list facing the next president. But it’s enough to make us
repeat JFK: “So you really want this…job.” Why?