New year New Chances

Photo: Sunrise Galveston Jan 1, 2008

It's a new year. A fresh beginning and new chances to get it right.

This is the year we change leadership in Washington. There's nothing bigger than this in democracy.

India may be the biggest democracy in the world, but the U.S. is still the oldest. Where else can a kid from no- where and people who know nothing (except politics) get elected?

Yet we survive it and the country has thrived, for better and for worse. We are at a low spot in the road. Our global credibility is at an all time low. Efforts to get bin Laden have been a total failure.

And now it appears that our own State Department and government did little to insure that Benazir Bhutto would be protected, after encouraging her to go back to Pakistan to campaign.

No wonder why our international reputation is at rock bottom. We put people in danger and do little to protect them. No one from the U.S. leaned on Musharraf to make sure Benazir had real security.

They prove it themselves by that silly statement the Pakistan government issued, insisting she had died from bumping her head on the car (after getting three bullets at close range and a bomb blast). How strange is that.

So Iowa is next. I live in Texas but was born in Iowa and can say this. People in Iowa are pretty salt-of-the-earth. They can smell B.S. a mile away. They are honest people. They like genuine people, not phonies with good stories.

Whoever it is they pick as a Presidential candidate, man or woman, will need to deal with an unstable nuclear Pakistan on day one, because a major part of being President is global foreign policy (and strategy) despite what some Presidential candidates are saying. We won't help ourselves to pick an amateur.

I don't know the Iowa caucus system. I had moved to Texas (at 16) when my time came to vote. The Iowa caucuses happen in two days and should be a worthwhile indicator of which candidates are the real two (or three) candidates to consider. Then the real horse race begins.

That applies to both Democrats and Republicans. I know both. And don't forget the Independents, who are growing by leaps and bounds as people have fled Bush world.

This is a new year. Anything is possible. It begins with a beautiful sunrise...