If Hillary Clinton is elected President of the United States I will not be happy, but I know that America will endure and even find ways to thrive.  

If Barack Obama is elected, I cannot say the same with much confidence.  Although my indelible belief in the quality and character of Americans in general gives me great hope, I think the odds are at least 50/50 that an Obama Presidency will be a wrong turn down a long and dangerous road for our great nation. 

If my pessimistic prognostication comes true, those who voted for him will be equally to blame.  In his diatribes on the need for change he and his audiences chant “Yes we can.”   Interesting use of the plural Senator, but might I remind you of the short attention span of the American voter.  If history is our teacher, the “Yeswecans” who are so prevalent today will be raptured back to indifference the morning of January 21, 2009. 

The tidal wave of support that put a spring in his step and a song on his tongue for two years will be gone.  So what’s a President to do? Follow through on his campaign pledges, of course.  Except that there are precious few of them.  In fact, those that he’s making are suddenly under fire as well.  Samantha Power, his recently resigned foreign policy advisor, mentioned that President Obama may not feel bound by his campaign promise to pull out of Iraq in 2009.  Or perhaps he should put an end to NAFTA, given that he’s an outspoken critic of the agreement.  However, stories abound that he may be using back channels to communicate to the Canadians that he’s more bark than bite on the topic. 

The phrase he borrowed from Deval Patrick, the recently elected Governor of Massachusetts, “I am not asking you to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations,” would be a remarkably conservative turn of phrase if delivered by a conservative politician.  Delivered by Senator Obama it is his first line of defense for a failed administration.  “The people chose not to take a chance on their aspirations and to accept the status quo,” he’ll respond. He is depending on a mobilized America.  Which, again, would be fine, if it were part of a consistent conservative philosophy of accountability, consequences and empowerment.  But when delivered by a big government Democrat, it is a sleight of hand designed to keep you from the truth, which is that he is neither authentic nor substantive. 

Senator Clinton’s complaints that he doesn’t have political experience do not, on their face, bother me.  His lack of executive experience bothers me a little but what bothers me most is his not exercising authority during his campaign.  On at least three occasions  (his wife’s comments about never being proud of America before, why he no longer wears an American flag lapel pin and his associations with Pastor Jeremiah Wright) he has had the opportunity to speak swiftly and decisively to the matter at hand and put the issue to rest.  In none of the cases did he. Rather he chose to obfuscate the issues with a barrage of verbiage.  I honestly believe that he thinks he can speak himself out of any corner without ever taking decisive action.  This is a troubling attribute in a Presidential candidate. There will be occasions requiring swift, aggressive, globally unpopular decisions. 

I wonder if he even knows what the job entails.  His response to the Hillary Clinton commercial wherein Hillary shows herself answering a ringing hot line at the White House at 3am was that it was fear-mongering.  I disagree.  That’s the job of the President. The commercial was an accurate portrayal of what the President does.  Had he said, “I just want to know why it took her six rings to answer the most important phone in the world,” that would have been a valid comment.  

Obama’s stated willingness to negotiate one on one with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba also demonstrates that he doesn’t understand the responsibilities associated with holding the most powerful job in the world. 

The job of the President of the United States involves confrontation, at home and abroad.  Yet Senator Obama eschews confrontation at nearly every turn. He avoids confrontation on the campaign trail by saying that he is above running a negative campaign. He avoids confrontation by not saying publicly that his wife mis-spoke. He plans to avoid confrontation by sitting down and making-nice with leaders of rogue nations instead of standing up to them.  

Senator Obama’s modus operandi is to be liked. He likes to be liked. He believes he can be liked by everyone and that once liked, he can than exert power gently.  This is the truest failure of his lack of executive experience. He hasn’t yet ascertained the fallacy of his thinking and he hasn’t learned to hone his instincts for making the tough decision even when it’s unpopular. 

What vision does Senator Obama have for America other than Americans be popular in the world and that he get credit for the change in our perception? He was quoted in the November 29, 2007, Time Magazine saying, “Ultimately the process [of running for President] reveals aspects of an individual’s character and judgment. If you think about past Presidents, probably those two things along with vision are the most important aspects of a presidency.”  Clearly he acknowledges the importance of having a vision for America.  Yet he says, “We are the change we seek.”  “We” are his vision.  He is calling on us to find our own way, to make our own change.  Is that the message his supporters are hearing?  

Let me add that this extended battle with Hillary Clinton is working to his advantage.  The Clinton/Obama battles are providing a shield for Obama to hide behind.  Hillary bemoans his lack of experience while lacking executive experience herself. Hillary attacks his health care plan for not covering ALL Americans and America sees only minor differences of degree. Obama’s policy postulates are thin, but he can get away with making no creative initiatives by simply responding to Clinton’s proposals.  He isn’t being forced to show any of his cards.   

Republicans who are watching this race already know they won’t vote for either Clinton or Obama but still watch with endless fascination how the Democratic Party may be loading the gun with which it kills itself. Likely Democratic voters are watching the process like a coming train wreck but view the candidate’s policies as nearly identical given Obama’s proclivity to hide behind his rhetoric and his opponent. 

A general election showdown should force him to create an agenda upon which to run and which will likely be exposed as insubstantial. Until then, he can spend his days addressing delegate counts and Democratic Party politics, neither of which contributes to a great presidency. 

What would a President Obama do on January 21, 2009?  How do you translate hype into a to-do list?  For a man uncomfortable making decisions, with no vision of the America he’d like to create and no policy mandates from the people, I fear we’ll see more of what we’ve already seen—a man who loves the adulation more than the work, and America will drift rudderlessly into the next decade.

In November of 2001 my wife and I took our five kids to Disney World. It was to be the vacation of a lifetime for them and in many ways it was. They were just the right age—my oldest was 12 at the time—to really enjoy everything Disney had to offer.  My fear upon returning home, though, was that we had just dropped ten-grand on a trip they’d barely remember.  So I made them each a 20” x24” frame filled with photos and memorabilia from our trip and hung them in their bedrooms so that they might never forget what a fun time we had as a family. 

Fadeout, fade in. 

It’s been said that the teenage years are God’s way of preparing parents for their kids to leave home.  My oldest will leave for college this fall and for my wife and me, this is a difficult time.  We’re simply not ready to begin thinning the herd.  The fact that my son has avoided the major pitfalls of youth is making it even harder.  But away he goes and the process of emotional separation has already begun.  His answers to our queries are becoming more monosyllabic by the week. 

This past February, though, will go down in my mind as one of the great periods of relationship building in my son’s lifetime.  He has applied to several premier  music programs in the country in order to continue studying the tuba.  So my wife and I took turns taking him from our Texas home to Chicago, Baton Rouge, New York, and Boston. 

Having an opportunity to spend one-on-one time with my son one last time was an exploration of who he is as a young man—not as a boy or as my child, but to see him interacting in new cities, with new people as he will once he’s gone.  I saw the fruits of our labor over the last 18 years:  the firm handshake, the eye contact, the comfort in talking to adults, the confidence on inner-city public transportation, the good manners shown to hosts. 

As any parent knows, those are hard-won victories.  I’m sure my son feels I’ve ridden him hard with the spurs of expectations. His requests that I occasionally “cut him some slack” prove my point. But, I’ve always hoped that one day my kids would see me not as their parent, but just as a guy—bumbling along as best as I can, pursuing my life, gladly with them in tow, but with no real idea of what I’m doing—much as they’ll one day be.  I have frequently reminded my oldest son that every day I parent him is the first day I’ve ever parented a kid his age so maybe he ought to cut ME a little slack. 

Young children—toddlers--do what’s called “parallel play.” They are together in the same room, but they are not playing together. Each is isolated in his own thoughts and activities but is side-by-side with his friend. The frenetic pace of parenting today’s teenager is very similar. We share a house and have occasion to interact, but all too often we are living parallel lives. 

Touring colleges with your teenager may seem like a perpetuation of your frenetic pace—wake up early Saturday, drive to campus, tour quickly, drive home late, church on Sunday, back to work, another campus next week. But geography forced us to slow down—in planes, trains and automobiles. This month we’ve spent more than 5000 non-tax-deductible dollars on these campus visits—a huge burden for any working family. But what we got wasn’t a thumb-drive full of dorm pictures and IHOP napkins filled with pros and cons.  What we got for our money was one last chance to learn about our son.  We each got glimpses of the fun times had, the dreams still held and the heart and head of man we’re proud to call our son. 

Beyond those glimpses, though, we simply talked, sometimes to the dismay of the New York transit authority and their oddly placed toll lanes. Trapped in adjacent plane seats fighting for the armrest, the tuba in its own seat by the window (encourage the flute, is all I’ll say), we were able to finally just talk to one another without competing against the self-imposed hourglass of the suburban lifestyle.  No rushing out the door to see his friends. No frantic dinners before his brother’s hockey game or sister’s soccer practice.  

For my kids I made a frame stuffed with the evidence of joyful abandon and carefree days their young minds might one day forget.  I need no such reminder.  My mind was ready to acknowledge the importance of these moments the minute I lived them.  His teenage years have not made me look forward to his departure, but they did prepare me to welcome and appreciate the last few months of his time in our home. 

Time.  I had five days of it. One hundred and twenty hours. Time enough to not care if we wasted some of it reading books or staring out the window. Time enough to not feel compelled to teach another life lesson.  Time enough to get off his back and on his bandwagon.