Let me start first by wishing you dear readers a ‘Happy New Year’ and God’s eternal blessings. I apologize for the absence of this column, last week.
I have received dozens of e-mails and text messages from readers of this column, each wanting to know my take on the open letters that ex-President, Olusegun Obasanjo and current President, Jonathan had exchanged, all centering on some weighty issues of the state. Most of the mails had wanted me to analyze the situation and see if such precedents had been established in the United States where, our current system if government is derived from.
I had promised myself that I was not going to make any comment on the ‘letter-gate’ believing that the issue has been thrashed and over flogged by different contending forces, but following the unending barrage of inquiries, I have decided to look at the issue strictly from American angle.
The club of ex-presidents in the United States is a sacred one. Members see themselves as a select few who had been given the opportunity at various times to superintend the affairs of both the American people, nay the world. For them, the resort to emotional outbursts or untamed and uncontrollable anger which may provoke a diarrhea of the mouth is something that they strive to avoid.
American people do not like their leaders whether in or out of the Oval office to diminish the awesomeness and might of the White House exemplifies. They expect ex-presidents to act in a certain manner, to project a certain degree of circumspection, of reflection and to project a temperament that is not jigged and jerked by certain negative human impulses. A situation where an ex-president goes out on a verbal outburst and blurts out things that should otherwise have been channeled through sources and routes that are not open to ordinary people will be both be unseemly and unnecessary grandstanding which the individual may never recover in the court of public opinion. Ex-presidents thus are supposed to carry the dignity of the office both in and out and wear them as badges of honor.
It is on record that one of the most demonized presidents in contemporary history of the American presidency has been William Jefferson Clinton. From the first day he was sworn in in 1993, the Republicans saw his presidency as an affront- an accident that happened because of the divided conservatives’ votes that the candidacy of the libertarian Ross Perot had engendered. To the Republicans, Bill Clinton was not a legitimate president and they did, all they could to delegitimize him. Even when he acted according to their play book, when he accepted hook line and sinker some of their policy prescriptions especially in domestic issues, such as welfare reforms, they still found his approach, to be growing government and expanding the welfare program.
When Bill Clinton did what was purely a personal failing a sexual indiscretion that most within the Republican Party were equally engaged in in, they made a mountain out of a molehill, and embarked on a spectacle of impeachment. The motivation was not to serve the common good or to advance the mechanics of governance, the motive was to embarrass the president and show that Democrats have alien and depraved values-set, unfit to rule America. Little wonder that the campaign slogan of the Bush /Cheney 2000 Presidential election was to “restore honor to the White
House’ that in their partisan and murky mind had been defaced and muddied by Bill Clinton’s lecherous and debased hands.
Most people would have been embittered and seek a pound of flesh upon leaving office; they would have looked for ways to criticize the incumbent president especially when things went awry both in domestic and feign affairs, but Bill Clinton kept his counsel. It is a known fact that the eight years of the Bush administration were the years the locust ate. The surplus that Bill Clinton had left was turned into massive deficit by the Bush’s administration pursuit of two wars-one of necessity in Afghanistan and one of choice in Iraq. The best peace time economy that Bill Clinton had bequeathed was replaced with a struggling economy with unemployment shooting up to about 7 percent. Banks were collapsing, while some too big to fail were bailed out. Civil liberties were trampled upon under the jackboot of a giant Leviathan fighting a war against terrorism. People who held contrary opinion were dubbed anti-American and intolerance of divergent viewpoints became a new norm- a norm that was alien to the very American creed of freedom and liberty.
Most people would have been embittered and seek a pound of flesh upon leaving office; they would have looked for ways to criticize the incumbent president especially when things went awry both in domestic and feign affairs, but Bill Clinton kept his counsel. It is a known fact that the eight years of the Bush administration were the years the locust ate. The surplus that Bill Clinton had left was turned into massive deficit by the Bush’s administration pursuit of two wars-one of necessity in Afghanistan and one of choice in Iraq. The best peace time economy that Bill Clinton had bequeathed was replaced with a struggling economy with unemployment shooting up to about 7 percent. Banks were collapsing, while some too big to fail were bailed out. Civil liberties were trampled upon under the jackboot of a giant Leviathan fighting a war against terrorism. People who held contrary opinion were dubbed anti-American and intolerance of divergent viewpoints became a new norm- a norm that was alien to the very American creed of freedom and liberty.
In spite of all that was going on, Bill Clinton, the immediate past president – a man so hated by the Republicans refused to join the fray of those who lambasted the Bush administration. He never came out in the public to lambaste or questioned the rationale of the Bush administration’s policies, even though it was obvious given the public utterances of his former advisers that he was concerned with the direction the country was heading, he felt adding his voice, which would have been politically expedient and advantageous to his Democratic base was unseemly for an ex-president.
Now fast forward to the current Obama administration. George W. Bush, the man who was equally eviscerated by the Democrats and was called all manner of names, including a war criminal by the lunatic fringe of the political left, has kept his counsel close to his chest since he left office in January 2009. Even when his and often unguarded former Vice-Dick Cheney has made a habit of putting his foot in the mouth by saying things that shock and confounds, Bush has remained in his Dallas home, tending to his new found passion in painting and has refused to criticize Obama in any of the hot button issues that has animated the political right. He has earned the ire of the Tea Party apparatchiks who would have otherwise expected him to become the attack dog- in- chief.
What point am I making here? I am simply saying that through Ex-president Obasanjo has the fundamental right to express his views the best way he deems fit, if he were an ex-American president, he would have adopted a different approach. He would have utilized the unfettered access that ex-presidents have to their successors to air out his views behind closed doors. American presidency is a revered institution and occupants –past and present are expected to comport themselves in a manner that adds, elevates and continue to add mystic to the institution of presidency. Coming out to attack the current occupant and questioning his motivations and ‘mojo’ will be seen as too unseemly and beneath the awesome power the individual once wielded.
But that’s the American way- our Nigerian ways are different-sometimes, confounding different! And so, dear readers, there you have it!
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