There are many people I admire and respect. One such person
is my father-in-law, Carroll “Kack” Sisler. When you shake hands with Kack,
you’ll note the arthritis in his hands and you’ll feel the calluses from a
lifetime of manual labor. He has worked as a lumberman, a long-haul truck
driver, a farmer, an oilfield worker and an excavator. In his 80s now, you may
find him after a snowstorm plowing his neighbor’s driveways or, in summer,
helping them build an addition onto their house. What you may not know, unless you know him, in which case
you would surely know, is that when you shake that calloused hand and Kack
gives you his word, it is better than any contract written by an entire phalanx
of lawyers. As Kack told his children, and my wife, Dawn, has passed on to our
children, “There are a lot of things that happen in life that you can’t
control. About the only thing that you have control of is your character.” And
more than saying, he modeled it for his children.
Kack would make a terrible politician because he believes in
telling the truth, even when inconvenient, maybe especially when it is inconvenient, and for doing the right thing,
not the expedient thing. As far as I know, the only elected office that he has
ever held was as president of his homeowners association. The only political
scandal that he was involved in was when a 30-something year old man impugned
my then 70-something father-in-law’s integrity and was challenged to step
outside and discuss the situation further. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed
and the whippersnapper was saved the humiliation of being pummeled by an old
man. But Kack takes his reputation and his character seriously. They are
essential to his very core. He has
never been wealthy; he has never held public office; he never went to college;
but I cannot think of anyone I respect more.
A mantra that I have often heard is that, “You may not like
the President or his policies, but he is the President so you must respect him
or, at least, respect the office.” This is almost always said by supporters of
whomever is in office at the time and, translated, means, “Don’t criticize my
guy.” But is the President above criticism? Is he or she due respect simply
because of the office he or she holds?
The United States is different than most of the rest of the
world. We do not have a monarchy where rule and adulation are a birthright, conferred
by God and respected by the people. Nor do we have a dictatorship where rule
and “respect” are enforced by violence. Our system is egalitarian. We teach our
school children that anyone, as long
as one is a natural born citizen, can grow up to be President of the United
States. No better example can be found than our current President, Barack
Obama. Born to a mixed race couple and abandoned at an early age by his father,
Obama was raised by his grandparents in a middle class lifestyle. By his own
admission, an indifferent high school student who was more interested in
basketball and smoking pot than he was in academics, he went on to graduate
from Columbia and from Harvard Law School. After famously working as a
community organizer, Obama decided to enter politics where he quickly rose up
the political ladder, finally culminating in the Presidency. If anyone should
embody the egalitarian spirit, it should be Barack Obama.
Unfortunately, people who desire the Presidency are rarely
the most intelligent, best managers, most learned, or most humble. Instead, the
people who achieve this office are often the most ambitious, most aggressive,
and frequently, most ruthless. The Founders, in their wisdom, recognized this.
They knew it was dangerous to entrust this amount of responsibility in one man,
so they limited his powers by entrusting the responsibility of legislation and
budgeting to Congress and Constitutional review to the judiciary. In addition,
they empowered the press with freedom from government control in order to serve
as a watchdog against government abuse and they made free speech a bedrock of the
Bill of Rights so that people could speak out, without fear of reprisal from
the very government they may criticize.
It is, therefore, not only allowable to criticize the
government, but it was expected that
we criticize the government. A free press is essential, but it is also
important that we need not be a member of the press to criticize our
government. It is a safeguard against governmental abuse that is allowed to
anyone in the United States, not just a select few politicians or journalists.
It is telling that in the United States, politicians are
said to be in “public service”.
When one is elected President, he is not merely elected to be leader of
his party, but the leader of the United States of American, whether they agree
with him or not. He is expected to put country over party and to put the public
welfare over private ambition. While it may sound quaint, our elected officials
are NOT elected to lord over the public, but to serve the public. The Presidency is imbued with tremendous power.
As the Commander-in-Chief of the greatest military force in the history of the
world and as CEO of the vast regulatory apparatus, the President has the power
to destroy lives, both literally and figuratively. This is a power that needs
to be handled delicately and with an attitude of humility. It is a huge responsibility to be
handed the reins of the Presidency.
Because of the power and responsibility, the President
should be held to a very high standard. When he falls short of that standard,
the populace has not only a right, but a responsibility
to criticize. When a President abuses his power for personal or political gain;
when he tries to circumvent the Constitution by legislating by fiat through
executive orders when Congress refused to pass what he desired; when his
administration thuggishly tries to silence their opponents through intimidation,
smear, or by using the power of regulatory agencies; or when, unlike my
father-in-law, the truth becomes subservient to expediency, when his core is
not integrity, but ambition, he is not deserving of respect.
When a President stands up in public and calls those who
oppose his political agenda, “enemies” who must be punished; when he tells his
political opponents to “stop talking” and to “go to the back of the bus”; when
he calls his political opponents a name denoting a sexual act; when he
routinely vilifies and attributes the worst motives to anyone who opposes his
agenda; in short, when the President does not respect the American people, he
forfeits his right to respect.
There are many people I admire and respect; Barack Obama is
not one of them.
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