As I sat and listened recently to Mr. Dubya Bush speak in stuttered, uninspired, monotone about the dwindling budget surplus, I cringed and wondered once again how such a mediocre man could ever attain the highest and arguably the most power post in the world. The now infamous budget surplus that any 6th grade student would have told him could not be sustained due to the faltering U.S. economy, and continued layoffs nationwide, is of course fast drying up. And the ill-timed, and quite frankly stupid, and now counter-productive tax rebate, the Republican pushed down our collective throats is now coming back to roost like a big fat I-told-you-so, on the White House lawn. I could almost hear the collective “Well Duh!” uttered around the world.
So as I listened to this shallow little man tell us all how even though the budget surplus was shrinking to almost nothing, and yet we would still have the money to grow the military budget, pay for missile defense, and still not touch Social Security, I grew increasingly angry. Who was this man? I asked the very air that permeated around me like an ever-darkening shroud. Who was this, this person who would be President, but lack the essential tools to even lead a parched man to a full well to drink? And who were these shadow-people around him that pulled his strings and made him dance to a tune that fatten their collective pockets, even as ours continued to thin under the barrage of a faulting economy and free market system feeding upon itself?
And then I thought to myself, as I have countless time since Dubya took the oath of office: if we only had a leader! And the poem below is the result of my concentrated angry and rising frustrations:
O’ If We Only Had A Leader
By
Vincent E. Martin
O’ if we only had a leader
In the White House the things we might be able to do.
The problems we could solve,
The mountains we could move.
As a nation of peoples united in search of a common goal,
A common theme,
A solid place to be in this world of conflicting dreams,
And ever-warring teams.
O’ if we only had a leader,
And not a re-animated lump of malleable flesh
With no view to call his own
And strings so tight and grips so tough
He knows not what to do,
Without the hands of invisible power making him dance to their
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