Brent Colton is a retired CIA operations officer now in the employ of the Creighton Corporation, a privately owned think tank that advocates various opinions on world issues, but it’s his clandestine job to solve the dirty problems for their private clients for a million dollar fee with no questions asked. When recovering stolen technology from a Vietnamese industrialist, Colton obtains evidence that he secretly partnered with a U.S. Senatorto rig the recent presidential election and elect him to the nation’s highest office.

DUBYA’S DIMINISHING LEGACY
by Terry Heath, 2006

If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier. Just as long as I’m the dictator.
--George W. Bush December 18, 2000

You have to feel sorry for the individual who will take the presidential oath of office on January 20, 2009 in the post George W. Bush America. What problems will that individual, be they Republican or Democrat, inherit once the tenure of George Walker Bush ends? Not many, except for rebuilding the image of the United States throughout the world.

Will George W. Bush only be remembered for what he did in the aftermath of the events following 09/11/01 that were subsequently emphasized during his presidency? Will that be his legacy in the history books? Bush 41, also known as George Herbert Walker Bush and his father, appears to have made no lasting significance since his sole and less than successful term was between the eight year runs of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton who both achieved lasting notoriety during their two terms in office.

Has anyone ever asked Bush what his long-term goals were to be once he got into office in 2001? Reagan had a plan with obtainable goals once getting elected and so did Clinton. Franklin Roosevelt had a long-term agenda when taking over at the height of the Great Depression for America that forever changed the way we live. What were Bush’s plans to accomplish during the two terms he got? He never really presented a long-term strategy to preserve and make this nation better, only used the aftermath of 9/11 to become a war president with no promise of an end to that undeclared war opposite ‘those who are against us.’

This next presidential election will be the first contest since Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952 in which we will have an open field in that none of the candidates from either party will be a president seeking re-election or a vice-president seeking promotion to the top spot. Doesn’t Bush want to instill some type of legacy of his eight years in office? It won’t help his reputation if the presidency goes to a Democrat in 2008 in the same manner that Clinton’s legacy was damaged in 2000 when his vice-president, Al Gore, lost to Bush.

Right now it’s apparent Dick Cheney won’t run in 2008 for the top spot so who are the Republicans going to choose as their standard bearer of this incumbent’s philosophy and carry on the Bush agenda for the next decade? Shouldn’t they plan ahead and come up with a replacement for him now to prepare for the 2008 campaign?

So, to prepare for that scenario, especially if the Republicans lose control of either the House of Representatives or Senate in the upcoming 2006 mid-term election; then wouldn’t it be wise for Bush to ask Cheney to step down so he can choose a new vice-president who can begin campaigning as Bush’s direct successor and promoter of his legacy? One person he could presumably select as his heir apparent is Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice if he was looking ahead to his place in history and to someone who could carry on his goals and plans.

It was Election Night on November 7, 1972 when Richard Nixon should have been his happiest upon being re-elected to serve a second term as our nation’s 37th president. Instead, as his aides later revealed in their various memoirs, he became overly depressed upon realizing his days as our chief executive were numbered and he had a finite presence as our leader and the promotion of his importance in history. Of course, the irony was he had even less time than he originally thought in the Oval Office to promulgate that legacy since he resigned twenty months into that term as a result of his complicity in the cover-up of the Watergate Hotel burglary by underlings of his administration.

Yet on that election night he worried about his place in history and discussed with his staff various ways they could repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution that prevented him from serving additional terms. Nixon believed he finally had a mandate from the public through his landslide win over George McGovern to accomplish such a task but eventually dropped the idea of running for a third term by the time of his second inaugural and instead set out on a plan to re-organize the federal government under him and anoint his successor under a new political party of his own creation.

Even though Vice-President Spiro Agnew ran for re-election with Nixon in their 1972 win it was obvious that Nixon was favoring one-time Texas Governor and Secretary of Treasury John Connally to be his successor as president in 1976. Unfortunately, for his grand schemes of choosing a designated replacement and torch bearer of his philosophy, the Watergate scandal erupted shortly after their second inauguration and both Agnew and Nixon resigned their offices in disgrace and Connally never made it to high office despite his selection as Nixon’s heir.

George W. Bush has three years left in his presidency. What does he want to do to create his own mark into history? It’s obvious that 2005 won’t be remembered by historians as one of Bush’s best years in office. So what does he hope to accomplish in the remaining time of this final term to change his public image and make sure a Republican wins in 2008?

The recent fiasco and embarrassing cave-in by the Bush administration over a company owned by the United Arab Emirates to run six of our seaports reveals the problems the president has regarding the wishes of the nation and those in his own party as his time in power begins to run out. One example is his administration has promoted since 2001 the image that there are many in the Muslim World who are our enemies and that we are at war against those in faraway lands who oppose us.

But the president then assures us that those Muslims who he personally knows are our friends and can be trusted. He can’t have it both ways in our government dealings with those in that part of the world who have vested interests that run counter to our country’s needs.

Has this president ever heard of the prophetic final warning from this nation’s original George W. who warned about sticking our nose in other people’s matters and what could happen if we did?

The time frame from the presidential reign of George Washington to the end of George W. Bush’s term will be 220 years. That should have been enough time for our leaders to learn and appreciate the wisdom the father of our country spoke in his farewell address to the nation upon leaving office. Beware of foreign entanglements.

The problem is that our leaders since have not followed the advice of the first George W. when establishing their own place in history by meddling into the affairs of other countries. That interference has made us to have troops in every major hotspot in the world from Korea to Iraq to Bosnia to still maintaining forces in Europe sixty years after World War Two ended.

Today’s school kids know very little about our country’s first president. At best, they know he’s on the dollar bill and quarter and famous for not telling a lie. But he was much more than that and, by public ignorance or a carefully crafted design, his warnings about our meddling into every world matter is not remembered by the citizens of today.

It could be unfair to make simplistic comparisons of this George W. to the first one. Two centuries of events have passed during their respective times in office and the structure of the presidency has dramatically changed since Washington’s farewell warning. But the content of his final statement has not.

Is the Iraq War going to be George W. Bush’s most enduring legacy? The old joke was that it used to be a Democrat who got this country into a war. Now it appears to be whatever Bush that’s in power gets us into a global conflict.

The American people wanted a leader who could guide the last superpower to even greater greatness in the post Cold War world. Instead, they got a naïve politician who wanted to be remembered as a war president. His wars have lasted too long and their length has forced the American citizens to sour on the 43rd chief executive. Will that be his legacy?

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com