HBASE

Back in my junior high days, when I was yet to be diagnosed as a clinical neurotic, I was merely known as a bit of an eccentric, but still a dork. One of the many happenings I staged was to announce my intentions to run for President of the United States in the year 2004. That was the first year I was eligible (I turn 35 in November of 2000, days after the election and as all of you Constitutional scholars know, you have to be 35 to become President). I handed out flyers and got quite a bit of excitement going on in the hallways of Parkview Junior High. I don't know if my peers actually thought I was electable, but they were happy to see a dork with a dream.

These days it only seems as if the current Presidential campaign began in the seventies, and you don't see many kids who dream of becoming President. Now days most kids want to be rap or rock stars, basketball or movie heroes, or the host of their own daytime talk shows. And who can blame them? There is little prestigious left about becoming the President. Politics is an unattractive, corrupt sport and the winner of a campaign ain't necessarily whoever wins the election. The scrutiny, the inflexibility of the system, the partisan backstabbing, what are the rewards to such a job? It might have been Nixon who said being a public figure means living under the view of a microscope. Being the President means living under the view of a proctologist.

Consequently we haven't exactly had a string of outstanding Presidents lately. Granted, over the years the position has lost a lot of its allure. We now celebrate President's Day by getting a day off and having big furniture sales. Little thought or feeling is given to those that have served this country well, those that made the decisions that affect where each and every one of us are today. Being President is no longer as impressive or as desirable as being a rich CEO of a multinational corporation. The ridicule of the opposition, the media glare, the political game playing, is what being President is currently about. It's hard to tell what came first, our most recent Presidents lack of inspiration and leadership skills or the whole machinery that robs the position of any of its historical glamor and significance.

The power of the position is what motivates most candidates today. Maybe it is naive to believe it ever was any other way, but what is lacking is what President Bush described as the "vision thing." People no longer become President to lead the country to where they see us being in the over all scheme of things. It's not so much about being a visionary as it is playing the role of the ultimate politician and pleasing the majority so that your popularity polls remain high. What separates the successful Presidents from the failures are those that had a vision of where they wanted to lead the country, and despite any personal shortcomings, the power of that vision more than made up for the downfalls of the position.

For those that have dreamt or are dreaming of becoming President, it is hard to maintain the vision in an age of cynicism and corruption. For example, what big preparations and plans is our future President of the year 2004 up to these days? Well on this particular Saturday night he enjoyed a dinner of already cooked tater tots along with steamed broccoli. He sat back to enjoy the made for TV movie featuring his favorite alien, Alf. What he has learned over the past twenty years is that often a long distant dream can be just as blurry or even blurrier than a lack of that "vision thing." Distilled inspiration.

The lure of serving one's country and going down as a positive blip in history is now seen as a blurred dream. Problems aren't solved anymore, they're disguised and passed on. Our schools are full of kids more worried about learning what they need to know for their lucrative careers, and worried about who's dating who, and what the latest episode of Friends is about rather than dreaming of filling the void of leadership, of vision of where we as a community need to be. Politics has turned a lot of people off, and we are raising a generation of cynics who care little about it. It's more attractive to most of us to live in the present and get as much money, power, acclaim and fame as we can and enjoy the fruits of our labor than it is to remember that kid with aspirations for the White House, who still has her ideals who still wants to do what is right for the country not what makes herself come off well. Happy President's Day 1996.