By Chris Basten

     ...so many persons believe that the world could be near-perfect if only they had the power of government to force other people to do what they think best for them... Power is a good thing, so long as I am the one who has it.

-Dean Russell

When children express an interest in becoming President (assuming they do such a thing anymore) they look cute in suggesting how they would save the world. If they were President they would outlaw school, have cartoons on TV all day, and would make sure that all kids have enough toys everywhere. How quaint. As we smirk at such innocent objectives, this is not far off from what real Presidential candidates promise. It can be just as amusing to watch grown men make promises we know they can’t fulfill. However, once these men are enthroned as king of the mountain, they often use their seized riches to spend upon such silliness.

The adult form of "toys for every child" could be anything from housing to health benefits for all. Some would say that President Bush’s version of this is democracy, or what he terms as "God’s gift to humanity." Whether Bush was referring to a Higher Power or himself will never be known. We just know that the President feels it is his duty to make sure that everyone has democracy. This may be the equivalent to having cartoons on TV all day.

What, pray tell, is the difference between a child’s ambitions for society and a President’s? The two are both well-intentioned but they are also poorly thought out. They both fail to look at the big picture and the effects that such policies will have in the future. They both look good on paper and make for good public speeches but they don’t accumulate into anything more than failure and mass irresponsibility.

A child’s wish to rule the world comes from thinking that things would be different if he or she was in charge of the Presidency. History has proven otherwise. Consider the following:

The head of state makes a speech to a packed house of legislators, and is cheered to the rafters for his flurry of visionary policy ideas. He calls for the restoration of cities and towns, and the revival of the nation’s industrial base through new spending programs. He makes more housing a national priority. He promises more education spending, new resources for the armed forces, a secure system of old-age pensions, and more equitable healthcare delivery. He takes the credit for a purported economic boom, and further promises to surpass all previous records in national productivity.

-Llewellyn Rockwell, Speaking of Liberty

Rockwell goes on to explain that this is not a state-of-the-union address from one of our Presidents. Rather, it was a 1946 speech delivered by Stalin. This sounds eerily familiar to a state-of-the-union address but instead of recognizing the speaker as a king or a dictator, we refer to him as Mr. President.  We give him the kind of attention that he lusts for and gaze at him as if he really is the moral leader we make him out to be. His wars are for the cause of democracy and free trade, not imperialism or conquest like the kings of old. His policies are for the good of all and are not the socialist promises of old European dictators. His taxation is for the betterment of all and is not the same as the communist pillaging that occurred during WWI and WWII in Germany, Russia, and Italy. He is the President, for God’s sake. He is ruler of the freest nation in the world. Surely, he is not a totalitarian.

The current resemblance to post-WWI and pre-WWII adoration for stoic leaders in the world is astounding. We just captured one that we put in power a mere two decades ago in Iraq. The Middle East, the Pacific Rim, and Africa are full of dictators that countries refuse to overthrow out of fear or patriotism. They have love/hate relationships with their leaders but they cannot give up their attachment to them. Is America really any different?

It is not just the kind of man we elect to office. It is the whole bloody idea of having a President in the first place. He is given the best suits one can find, a private airliner, and enough military power to give birth to global mushroom clouds. He is never held accountable. We fill his plate with "yes-sirs" who stumble over themselves to make sure that he never knows the truth about how badly he is doing or how much his approval ratings have plummeted. We allow him to spend trillions of our dollars on things that are unnecessary and downright wrong. He is a useless tyrant that shapes and modifies our existence because we elect him to do so. The power a President currently has in his hands would make Stalin blush were he still alive today.

What does it say about America when we copy the rest of the world in having one man rule over us? Why have we strayed from our roots of self-sufficiency and independence from the King of England and adopted the despicable monarchy that now beseeches us in the President of the United States of America? The answer isn’t always easy to find but a lot of it has to do with human indifference; "this is the way we’ve always done it", in other words.

Of course, more and more Americans are starting to awaken from their slumber. The President’s imposition into our lives has become unbearable. There is still much work to be done as millions still believe that voting for a different man will make a difference. The position, not the man in the position, is the problem. The Presidential throne has corrupted more men with good intentions than we care to admit to. The President of the United States should become what it originally starts out as: a childish fantasy that can never be realized.