Franksummers3ba's Blog

The early indications are that the contest to fill the next term in the White House will be less driven by a handful of well-known and well-defined issues than some recent campaigns have been. If that turns out to be the case then someone possessing an historical perspective will be able to say that there have been other times when issues were less important. The party labels, the reputations of the candidates, the fact of certain demographics are three among many factors that help define and inspire the choices of voters. None of these three factors are simply related to political issues.

Maranatha Youth Group in New Zealand– my good friends at the dawn of the 1980’si

The Planned Parenthood videos, the graphic videos of beheadings and burning people alive join with video of shooting incidents and bombings across our nation, these are three examples of a new video consciousness shared by voters which doesn’t allow the electorate to be completely satisfied with a debate or a traditional television spot presenting the views of candidates

I think that the dispassionate consideration of political issues is a kind of luxury. Issues still matter whether or not they can be considered as important decisions about which decent and reasonable people can disagree. But if that kind of discussion can be considered a luxury it remains a very nice kind of luxury.  I’m pretty sure that my life has been framed largely in terms of responding to the concerns and events around me that inspired me to both emotional and intellectual reactions. I think that there are swing voters in this election just as in other elections. However, I also think that we are in a period when fewer people who might have voted for someone else or who might have stayed home will turn out for the eventual winner because that person did a better job of putting together the planks of a political platform or defining a crucial issue.

The link of living Veterans, active troops and the fallen in battle is a chain of duty we must all remember.

In terms of the threats that face our country all of us have somewhat different reactions to the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, ISIS, Al Qaeda, the saber rattling regime in North Korea (or the DPRK), the arms programs in Iran, the limited options faced by the most hostile forces within the Russian regime. We cannot expect anyone, including millions of voters who are in the military, to trust the future of our security and readiness to the  ability of a candidate to define issues. Clearly I value rhetoric and argument. In addition good debates and television spots are easy to write about but this election has people worrying about who can act as an effective Commander in Chief, who can keep the country’s mounting social tensions from tearing the country apart. People are looking for those who will support their part of our society in the  the class or racial struggles they see going on even though few will declare that as openly as I just have done in reporting about the choices of others.

When the General election comes around and long before  issues and platforms will matter but not nearly as much as people think. Those who fear government being overly aggressive in policing them are likely to trust Rand Paul and give him the benefit of many doubts no matter how poorly he connects with them on a few issues. Those who want a nationalist,   capitalist, politically moderate America which is deeply committed to its own interests will trust Donald Trump no matter how badly he connects with them on various issues. Those who want a more equitable and effective program of social justice from someone not afraid to be associated with Socialism will trust Bernie Sanders no matter how poorly he connects with those voters on some issues.

Thomas Sowell wrote an interesting editorial recently that relates to the perspective of my series of blog posts in interesting ways. He decries the fact that the debates are flawed and that  those doing best in the polls after one debate on the Republican side had no governing experience. He makes a plea to Republicans to look to the qualified governors. Sowell makes some good points. But I think people are justifiable concerned that the issues that really matter in this campaign  go beyond things that can be well addressed in traditional debates and platforms. America is not in a panic but there are hard edged and well defined anxieties across the electorate. People are attracted to a President they believe can save us from a general trend many do not find acceptable. Unfortunately those who want change disagree deeply and will struggle mightily among themselves.   We face a political crisis and while we may not understand all we should about it we should start recognizing that fact, the fact of a kind of truly political crisis…

It might be a good time to get away from blogging about politics and the Presidential Primaries and blog about the stock market.  I want to start by saying I see American destiny in the USA itself. I see it in old allies and bases, in the constitutional reforms I have proposed, in space colonization and in a prospering world. That is the destiny we should be seeking while preparing for obstacles in our way and knowing we may not get there. I will discuss those priorities a little here and the stock market as well as Asia but that is not primarily what this post will be about. This post appearing during a stock market crisis is about how the next President and the current on will help or not help America to find its destiny. But we start where we are, what is up with the stock market? Here is my brief ananlysis:

I have decided to post my own simplified analysis of the possible financial and economic crisis:
1. The Chinese economy has many strengths and some of its apparent weakness is a weakness imported from elsewhere. But the stock market has a lot of domestic investment driven by a glut in construction where people had invested before. Despite the Communist ideology the social safety net is weak and flawed by first world standards. Despite a huge economy consumer demand is limited. All this means huge funds allotted to investments ultimately secured by exports and infrastructure. When they stumble they weaken the forces that drive their recovery.
2. Brazil, Australia and OPEC depend on Chinese demand for commodities to power economic engines that do a lot of other things in the world economy.
3.The U.S. and the Western economic powers do not have robust security and balance. That’s why they must be more concerned than normal.

So we may or may not have a crisis… But what kind of crisis we might have surely has something to do with what our hopes, dreams and destiny in the future might be.  Are we facing a possible derailment of our economy without reference to any long term destination or is there more than that in this period of time to be concerned about? Is our economy being derailed when we ought to be going somewhere at a relatively good speed. Do we have and does America demand a President who understands the connections in the global economy? Does any candidate know how people in other countries will continue to make choices that affect our prosperity?

This is the author of this blog. I am standing beside the stone boat in the Summer Palace in Beijing.

The picture I chose to post above is of me standing in front of the stone boat in the Summer Palace in Beijing. The Empress who built the boat is much criticized for embezzling funds from China’s struggling and tiny navy to build this luxury. But perhaps the truth is more complicated and she perhaps realized the cost of real reform and finding independence from the colonizing (not full-fledged typical colonial) powers. The cost that would be paid by the Republican Sun Yat Sen, the Nationalist Chiang Kai Shek and the Communist Mao Dze Dong. The stone boat was perhaps not as ill advised a choice in her waiting game as it seems at first sight. But in the end a stone boat does not defend a nation well or go anywhere. I think we face a great deal of a challenge in setting a course and establishing a plan for our nation’s future. The Empress had a sense of timing that allowed for an outcome that was not the worst defeat but neither can we forget her dynasty and Empire fell even as a new China arose. Trump could be a harbinger of great change, Bernie Sanders could be and Hillary could be the first woman President of the United States. President Obama has already labored to create a change in our destiny.  I have less influence than Empress Cixi but I do think that I also have less patience of the kind she had. I am less active and more patient than perhaps is write but the boats I build or meant to fight I think. These days at the start of school and the end of summer in Louisiana are not the optimum time to blog about politics. But we must face the end of this term of President Obama and ask, if a crisis in the markets does develop what kind of stone boat is the Democrat claim to have averted a Great Depression? What candidates really are prepared for the risks we all face?   Perhaps Trump’s Wall has value as an infrastructure project to provide jobs in a crisis. The question then is whether better projects could be found. Can they?

We all have images of what leadership should look like which are not simple portrayals of reality.

We discuss all these things but we only need to look at JEB to know that this Bush is tied to the Mexican people beyond mere ideas. The wall proposed on the Mexican border, competition with China and warnings about Russia involve real people.  North Korea is really rattling its saber. We can look out at both domestic and foreign issues and be overwhelmed by the sheer number of factors in every decision. But politics is not just something to discuss, it is not just a series of political campaigns and elections. The destiny of the United States of America cannot be a subject which is entirely ignored in the process of electing the President of the United States. Does the country have a destiny and if so how will it be defined.

What are the real challenges our nation faces and what are some of the symbols and projects we pay attention to instead of meeting those challenges?  Donald Trump is setting out clearly a challenge of destiny. Making America Great Again is the motto and slogan of a man claiming we have lost our way to a higher destiny. Yes, there is something backward looking as well as a lack of specifics outside of  a few narrow objectives. Like a lot of American politicians he seems clearly to identify China as a principal rival. Some of my own posts on China and relationships with Asia can be found here, here and here.

Donald Trump has talked a lot a bout China but his policies toward Mexico and predominantly Latin American undocumented aliens has taken attention away from the China issues that he has addressed. On the Democrat side Bernie Sanders has warned against not protecting the American worker from Chinese pressures. But his domestic social policy has taken more prominence. Jim Webb is running as a Democrat who believes in American Destiny.  He wrote a good bit about matching China’s might as a U.S. security interest. I could cite those parts of the text but I choose to quote a different part, he writes in his announcement of his candidacy:

And let’s work toward bringing the complex issue of immigration reform to a solution that respects the integrity of our legal traditions while also recognizing the practical realities of a system that has been paralyzed by partisan debate. The holistic leadership approach I instituted nine years ago regarding criminal justice reform offers a prototype that can be used on the multifaceted challenges of immigration reform.

With every one of these recommendations I can make you two promises. The first is that every endeavor will be based on the premise that has been the foundation of our society from the day the United States Constitution was signed: that we are a nation of laws, not of specially privileged people, and that our greatest strength comes from the power of our multicultural heritage. And the second is that I mean what I say, that if I make a promise I will keep it, and that outside my faith and my family, my greatest love will always be for this amazing country that for more than 200 years has given so many people the opportunity to have a good life, raise a family, live in freedom, and achieve their dreams.

Let’s work together to make America an even better place.

I am ready to fight on behalf of every one of these issues. Will you help me do that?

America needs a vision. Barack Obama whom I mostly criticize was different than George W. Bush but both ran campaigns that acknowledged Chinese prosperity as important to the world. In very different ways  they saw a future of cautious cooperation and competition. There seems to be a more hostile tone in the air now. But mostly people seem to realize that opposing China should not become the new Cold  War. Perhaps this economic scare will make us all realize how much our economies depend on the prosperity of the other.

But like many American politicians with views about Asia different than min I think Asia is important but our destiny does not focus there but here.

What does the developing election cycle mean and portend for America?This post has links to other pages and posts in this blog. It is a chance to get caught up with what I think if that is something you wish to do. It skims across the current field of candidates and looks briefly what the election might mean. It is not an in depth essay on any subject. I am not running away from what I have written in the past  and I am laying out here connections I will return to if and when I write more about this  series of elections which will elect the next President of the United States.

When I started this blog I had a regular correspondence with people around the world more than I do today. My own sense of needing to address issues that I address here was born in part out of the desire to engage with contacts in the Philippines, China, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Greece and other countries. America still engages the world daily and must do so  effectively. I do not know what my future will bring but I know that I am not in a position to run for President of the United States — so who is running?  When we vote will we vote to make a difference, to preserve something in danger or what? Americans have choices to make at the end of Obama’s second term.

The voting booth remains a powerful part of our society.

I have both followed the news and politics as they are in this blog and also proposed radical change. I am never personally doing all that very well and I worry a good bit at a personal level but in this blog I have proposed constitutional changes addressing weaknesses in our system, universal human challenges, unmet needs that cripple needed contributors to our future and foreign threats. This post is not about running away from that work.  But I do acknowledge that other visions are more likely to engage the world on behalf of America for the foreseeable future. We should ask whether the people running are really engaging the challenges America must engage to survive and thrive. Are we facing the real future and present?

Who will be the next President of the United States?  Will it be Hillary Clinton, the supposedly unassailable Democrat who is not new to anything including this blog — as you can see here? Will it be the Socialist and Independent surprise leader of crowds across America — Bernie Sanders? Will Vice Presidential elder statesmen like Albert Gore and Joseph Biden join the two older contenders in the pimary arena? Will one of them become President? Will it be one of the Democrats scarcely getting a mention today?

Is there an even more disruptive surprise coming from the Left? Will someone lead and attack on that side of the political spectrum which cannot yet be articulated?

The popular mass street politics of the left may yet be telling …

Or does it seem more likely that the nest President of the United States will be more or less a Republican? Will it be the billionaire celebrity Donald Trump whom I recently profiled in this blog at this post? Will it be Jeb Bush the scion of the Bush Presidential Dynasty, former governor of Texas and a man with deep ties to the emerging Hispanic vote?  Will it be Ted Cruz, who is a rock ribbed conservative capable of exciting the troops of America’s unusual right who  nonetheless is running in defiance of the Constitution as read by most conservatives because he was not born on US soil? Will it be the Southern Huckabee, the female Fiorina, the African-American Carson, the Latino Rubio or New Jersey poster boy Christie — all of whom have a specific base and a specific bridge to other votes of the type a demographer would find in their base?

So many others seem to have a chance to cause some trouble for those leaders and Kasich, Santorum, Perry, Jindal and the rest all have real issues and real supporters. Will one of them take it away?

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It so happens that this blog is about as old as the Obama administration and began in the campaign running up to it.  I have been writing for a long time. I have been discussing politics for a long time. I have been discussing the politics related to the Presidency of the United States for a long time. The blog may not have been around longer than Obama’s White House but the interest and discussions have been.  It is true that his presidency has been one of the factors that has caused me to make hard choices . It has been a factor which along with other factors has caused me to be clearer in some areas, more open on other issues, more radical in yet other areas.

If it had been more successful then one might argue that it would be facing a real test of political relevance as the eight years of the Obama administration come to a close.  So this is a blog post about where I stand and where I believe that the world stands as voters try to sort out who will be the next President of the United States of America. I think that it really does matter  what situation the next President of the United States will be elected into and required to engage.

To safeguard liberty we must be able to adapt to the changing times.

The future of the united States as a whole is not susceptible to being predicted in the way and with the kind of certainty many people think that they would like to see. I have certainly experienced change in my personal life since  Obama was elected. Out of the four grandparents that I was born with three were living when Obama was elected and none are still with me today. My undergraduate alma mater had never won a bowl game in football and now they have set records in dominating the New Orleans Bowl. Since Obama was elected, family has evolved my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and currently are not residing together. Since Obama was elected the bad aspects of much of my life as a continuity and a collection of trends have become far more impossible to deal with than they were before. In that process of refining my ideas and communicating them I wrote a pair of model constitutions — one for the United States and one for Louisiana.

This blog itself represents a good bit of my work in recent years.

But the world has gone rolling forward. ISIS has become a big player on the world stage, we have normalized  relations with Cuba, we have a nuclear deal with Iran and the Russians have invaded and annexed the Crimea. Racial violence, police misconduct, the Occupy Movement, Acorn and many other signs of stress and disorder have been featured in the headlines and the evening news. The Confederate flags  and monuments have disappeared from many places. The Great BP Oil Leak and the constant news of storms, droughts, floods and fires have made Americans worry about the basic security of the land and sea themselves.  Obamacare has become law, Gay marriage is declared equal every where by the Supreme Court and mass shootings have become almost too numerous to enumerate.

One of the things that has happened is that I have proposed radical constitutional change. I have not just proposed radical constitutional change of any old kind but have endorsed a particular kind of constitutional change rooted in visions, experiences, choices, readings and sorrows of my personal past as well as engaged with my visions of the future. In the confines of this blog are a set of model constitutions which harken back to the view point of a more optimistic and younger man. Are they still relevant m0dels in my view? That is a subject we will return to however briefly.

Former wife Michelle Broussard Summers and I — Sea Island Georgia

Bobby Jindal is the first Governor of Louisiana to seek the Presidency of the United States in my lifetime. I could not say that I am opposing him or supporting him at this juncture. However, the fact that I am not completely supporting him and doing so enthusiastically is an indication that he and I do not share all of the vision of where we need to go next or who needs to take America there. My own sense of political engagement has not much increased over the last eight years but it has not much diminished either.

Dr. Boustany and I at a town hall meeting. This was several years ago.

The struggles of the country have a complicated timeline and do not match in any particular way my writings about Obama as a phenomenon described here or my writings about the constitutional changes I suggested in pages such as this one or posts such as this one.. However, there have been blog posts dealing with topical news and you can look at examples of that here and here. Whatever else may have happened there has been a continuous evolution in the lives and circumstances of all Americans and the country has changed. But perhaps it has not changed as much as I warned it might.

America is still a Federal union with many levels of government and especially with the States still possessed of some sovereign status.  In my own concern about politics there have been various state issues as well as the issues of the Union which have concerned me. That is evidently going to be part of the future that the next President must face — federalism.

Congratulating Louisiana State Senator Fred Mills on reforming Marijuana law…

The question then becomes what is this country really facing in the next election?  The truth is that I do not think that any of us fully know the answer. It may be that the next president ends any interest in radical change, brings in change more radical than anyone else or simply takes presidential politics farther away from engaging with the great tensions and debates raging across America.