(Editor’s note: This month marks the 10th anniversary of Chuck Norris’ weekly column at WND.)
In about a month, we will have a new president elect. This is an election of our lifetime, with virtually everything on the line.
But what is so unfortunate is that the presidential debates and mainstream media attention have focused almost entirely upon past personal sins and character assassination.
While there is no question that character counts – that’s a given – we must also remember what George Washington said, “We must take human nature as we find it: perfection falls not to the share of mortals.”
When General Washington was on the battlefield of war, he undoubtedly wanted the most impeccable of characters among his generals. But in the end, when it came to saving lives and our country, he accepted struggling sinners among his top leaders if they were willing to lead at the front of the revolutionary battle.
America is fighting multiple wars, literally and culturally. Citizens are dying and going to die, and the odds for impending disaster loom higher than ever. We need a leader who has the stamina and strategy to win the wars, and not drive us deeper into them.
With only a month remaining before the election, the debates and mainstream media should pivot from finding gotcha-gaffe moments about the candidates to discussing their leadership views and issues that mean most to the American public.
If I were moderating the presidential debate, I would ask at least seven questions that must be answered with specific strategies, plans and goals by the candidates:
1) As president, what would you do to rebuild U.S. standing and strength in the world?
The world is in a much more volatile state than it was eight years ago, and at the heart of it lies crippled U.S. relations virtually everywhere. The Obama administration has dismantled U.S. stability and our citizens’ safety around the world.
Ever since the Arab spring, U.S. international relations have tanked, resulting in heightened international tensions and increased wars. Libya and Syria are in absolute civil chaos, and have become humanitarian disaster zones. U.S. nuclear deals have been made with Iran, further straining relations with them and our greatest Middle-East ally, Israel. Dictators and militaries from Russia to North Korea taunt the U.S. without repercussion. And through it all, the president has waffled like a politically correct zombie, increasing global chaos and decreasing our position and power in the world.
We may not want to be the global police, but will we settle for global wimp?
2) As president, what would you do differently from the Obama administration to fight and win the war against ISIS, while protecting Americans at home and abroad?
Back in October 2014, Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stated that the Obama administration’s immediate and total vacancy from Iraq created the vacuum through which ISIS spawned and gained its caliphate and power.
Outside of Syria and Iraq, since September 2014, ISIS has directed or inspired more than 85 attacks around the world, including over a dozen in the U.S. states of Florida, California, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Texas, Massachusetts and Mississippi.
Four-hundred to 600 more Islamic jihadist fighters have been recently trained by ISIS to target Europeans.
Judicial Watch explained in April that Mexican cartels are helping Middle-East terrorists to cross the southern border into the U.S., including ISIS militant Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir.
The FBI warned us that 900-plus ISIS operatives are presently being investigated inside the U.S. – in every state of the union – and that they are actively recruiting U.S. teens and trying to hack major U.S. power grids.
Whatever Obama is doing to fight the war on terror, one thing is clear: We need a far better commander in chief and strategy.
3) As president, what specific qualifications and characteristics would you look for in future candidates for U.S. Supreme Court justices?Â
With four justices being in their 80s during the next presidential term, the next president could be appointing up to four new justices. What that means is that there could be a dramatic shift in the court, reshaping American life (your life) and jurisprudence for nearly 30 years.
Carrie Severino, policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network and a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, explained, “You cannot overstate the importance of the Supreme Court in the next election.”
4) As president, what specifically would you do to reduce the national debt and restore fiscal sanity in Washington?Â
Since Obama has taken office, the national debt has doubled to $19 trillion.
In the midst of the greatest recessionary period since the Great Depression, what sound, fiscally minded accountant would ever drive a volatile economy like ours that far deeper into debt?
President Ronald Reagan hit the nail on the head when it came to Washington spending: “We could say they spend money like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors. It would be unfair, because the sailors are spending their own money.”
Sooner or later, our crushing debt is going to collapse our economic system again. Even the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, confessed in its January 2015 report, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2015-2025”: “Beyond 2017, CBO projects, real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) will grow at a rate that is notably less than the average growth during the 1980s and 1990s. … Beyond [2018], however, the gap between spending and revenues is projected to grow, further increasing federal debt relative to the size of the economy – which is already historically high. …”
There is only one thing that will force Washington to stop its insane spending: a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. There is no reasonable alternative.
Thomas Jefferson could essentially foresee the coming financial train wreck when he said all the way back in 1789: “I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.”
5) As president, what changes would you make to Obamacare? And if you don’t like it, what alternatives would your administration offer?Â
Even former President Bill Clinton admitted this past week that small business is “getting killed” by the “crazy” Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
Bill Clinton explained: “But the people who are getting killed in this deal are the small businesspeople and individuals who make just a little too much to get in on these subsidies. Why? Because they’re not organized, they don’t have any bargaining power with insurance companies, and they’re getting whacked. So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care, and they’re out there busting it sometimes 60 hours per week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It is the craziest thing in the world.”
6) From the halls of Washington, D.C., to inner-city streets and sports stadiums, Americans have never been more divided. As president, what would you do to heal the wounds of division across our country?
The country has become further divided under the Obama administration. Earlier this year, the Blaze documented “7 ways Obama has divided the country.”
About Washington itself, Obama confessed in a CBS interview that his own presidency has contributed to its divisions: “The one thing that gnaws on me is the degree of continued polarization. This has gotten worse over the last several years. And I think that in those early months, my expectation was that we could pull the parties together a little more effectively” (italics mine).
Racial incidents and riots have been at an all time high under the Obama administration, and they have worsened the tensions and relations between law enforcement and citizenry. To date, Obama has not taken a single leadership step or action to help heal those divides.
If we are ever to get back on track, we need to go back to the beginning and re-establish a foundation of decency: to uphold the basic tenets to “love our neighbor as ourselves” and “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
7) Every U.S. president must take an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Give me three specific examples how the present federal government is not following the U.S. Constitution, and how your administration will better “preserve, protect, and defend” those areas in your first 100 days in office.
As I wrote in my New York Times bestseller, “Black Belt Patriotism,” the White House is running by executive orders. Congress avoids its duty to hold government officials accountable to the Constitution. Judges also ignore the Constitution, and instead they legislate from the bench. Freedom of speech as outlined in our First Amendment is under assault and constriction by hate crimes and laws. Faith and religious values are undermined and under incessant assault from secular progressive interpretations of the Constitution. Our Second Amendment right to bear arms is being redefined to make it harder for law-abiding citizens to acquire guns. And the federal government has usurped the power of the states as outlined in the 10th Amendment, and lives to overreach every local government.
In short, the U.S. government has constitutionally run amok. And there’s only one way to get the entire federal government back on track: to go back to the beginning and our founders’ original intent for the Constitution.
My final thoughts about constitutional constraint can be comprised in these three founders’ quotes:
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite” – James Madison, Federalist 45, 1788.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” – Tenth Amendment, 1791.
“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition.” – Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 1791.
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