The Buck Stops Where?

Harry Truman had a motto. “The buck stops here.” It was simple, poignant and effective. Its greatest strength however, was that it was a statement of responsibility. The President of the United States was laying it on the line and proclaiming that his authority had limits and that when reached, he was ultimately accountable. His choice to drop both atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused ramifications beyond imagination. His decisions to enter the Korean War and remove Douglas MacArthur as commander of the United Nations forces when he pushed for the war to enter China as well as his advocation of the use of atomic weapons alienated some Americans and stirred up a bit of a furor. Regardless of what he did good or bad, Truman believed that his post as the executive of our country deserved both credit and fault. His idea of definitive responsibility can be summed up in one word: dignity.

Some might claim dignity was what President Clinton tore out of, stomped on and ridiculed in his eight years in office. Others might know it as the what Oliver North, President Reagan and a great deal of his cabinet pissed on and left to die during the Iran Contra affair or the plethora of equally illegal activities they indulged in. Whatever you believe it to be, its basic premise is that of decorum. It is good manners. It is modesty, etiquette and politesse. Most importantly however, it is restraint; Restraint from partaking in activities that may seem dishonest or deceitful; Restraint from self-aggrandizement; Restraint from excess.

Of late there has been a lack of dignity in our country’s politics. Naturally both sides exhibit aspects of lacking it, but one party has shown its true, bold colors. During the 2000 election cycle, you could hear it at almost every stump for then-Governor Bush. George W. Bush was going to return dignity to the White House. Without pointing fingers (usually at any rate), he and his campaigners laid the claim out that in the eight previous years, dignity was lacking in our executive’s mansion. For all the bad President Clinton may have done, his good far exceeded it. His social conscious extended not only throughout our country, but across the rest of the world as well. Where there was ethnic cleansing, he tried to stop it. Where there was poverty, he attempted to stop or limit it. While his social life may have been immoral to some, it could not be said that his social policies were in any way.

Six years later, the questions remain. What dignity was George W. Bush talking about? Was it dignity or just a prudish sense of morality that he wanted to restore? Where is the dignity that he brought back? What exactly has he done to merit the esteem bestowed upon him as a savior of it?

Since his presidency began in 2001, he has worked at going on vacation more than any other President in our country’s history and still has three years left to set an unreachable record which I have no doubt he will. He has overstepped his bounds as the President by usurping the rights delegated to the people by the Constitution with his personal authorization of illegal warrant-less wiretaps of American citizens. He flaunts his illegal activities in public and says that he will continue to partake in them. Where is his restraint? Where is his restraint from being patently dishonest and deceitful with the American public? Where is his restraint from aggrandizing himself as some sort of rescuer of values? Where is his restraint from excess?

What has he done that has been so much more dignified than his predecessor? If getting a hummer from an intern and lying about it to his wife strips any ounce of dignity from the Presidency, I can only imagine what spying on our own citizens, lying our country into a war which has killed 2,243 of our own countrymen let alone over 100,000 innocent Iraqis and then ravaging our economy to the tune of trillions of dollars in debt and entrusting a country we occupy to a convicted fraud does to it.

If anyone believed that President Clinton brought shame to the office of the President, I encourage you to look at what has been done to it since then. A crook is in office. He is a thief. He broke federal securities laws four times (that we know of) while working for Harken. He has thrashed the 4^th amendment to the United States Constitution. He lied to the American public when he went out of his way to explain that wiretaps always require a warrant while at the same time doing the opposite. He lied about the extent of the Iraqi weapons program in order to scare a country into a war in which over 100,000 Iraqi and 2,200 Americans have died. At what point do we make the statement that the blood of all those who died is on his hands? When can we say to those 2,243 families that their sons and daughters are dead because of the President’s arrogance and lies?

Most importantly, how can we explain the death of their beloved child, the child that they worked so hard to raise, took to birthday parties, to baseball practice, to the park, to school, to visit aunts and uncles, to take to the doctor when they have a high fever at 3 AM, to buy them that new toy that they wanted so badly, to take on family road trips across the country to let them see just what it is all about, to comfort and rock to sleep after waking up from a nightmare, in terms that would make it seem remotely justified?

Of all the questions to ask President Bush, one stands out as the vastest in breadth: When will you take responsibility for your actions? In his farewell address, President Truman set the standard by which all Presidents have since been measured when he said “The President--whoever he is--has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job.”

Taking responsibility for your decisions is something they teach in kindergarten. Why our President does not understand that may be more indicative of his level of intelligence than anything else.