Let's cut to the chase on the 2008 U.S. Presidential contest involving Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator John McCain--the establishment retreads, to borrow a phrase from Maureen Dowd--versus the born-again, Columbia/Harvard whiz kid, Senator Barack Obama.  

Americans saddled themselves in 2000 and again in 2004 with a goofy, devious and duplicitous man, G.W. Bush, Jr., who is President of the United States. He is totally dependent upon his mentor and handler, the Vice-President, Dick Cheney. For reasons not entirely clear, this senior politician became enamored with the "neoconservative" crazies in the early 1990's, and signed on to their Israel-first, Likud agenda. He has been riding that horse ever since.

Cheney thinks he knows everything, because he has been working in Washington for most of his adult life. The Cheney arrogance knows no bounds, but it turns out, based on the track record, that his judgement stinks. That basically sums up the eight years of the Bush Jr. Administration, especially its foreign policy, under its disastrous and secretive CEO, Dick Cheney. POTUS 43 and his CEO can boast, heading into their last months in office, that they have the worst approval ranking in modern American history. 

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Forget about politics--the liberal v. conservative dichotomy--all that is diversion and entertainment. The Washington politicians and the news media are gaga with politics and themselves. It is a waste of time, except for those who are involved in it for  purely business reasons. Cheney, Bush Jr. and McCain are professional Republican politicians. Hillary and Bubba and Obama are Democratic Party professionals. Each individual and each party is working his or her or its side of the street. Same street, different clients. It is a racket, or if you prefer, a business. 

Like Hillary and Bubba and Obama, Cheney and Bush Jr. and McCain would probably be mediocrities in the private sector. Cheney made a fortune, during the brief time he was out of Washington, while acting as the CEO of Halliburton, but that money-making hiatus was predicated upon his prior and future Washington connections. In a word, politics.

On the Democratic side, since leaving the Oval Office in disgrace in 2000, Bubba and his partner, Hillary, have pocketed over a hundred million dollars for doing little more than repeating banalities and writing about their sordid lives in politics. $100,000,000.00 is a lot of moolah, and speaks volumes about the Bubba/Hillary team, as well as about the unseemly times in which we live.

If thoughtful individuals want to think of themselves as "liberal" or "conservative", that's fine, but irrelevant. Such idealism may be admirable, but it is wasted. It is utilized by the pros, be they Republican or Democrat, to secure jobs as office holders in Washington. Once elected, there exists afterwards a clear path to becoming a lobbyist or a talking-head on television.

At the end of the day, what actually counts are not ideas or outlook, but the big donors and the big lobbies. They want something in return for their investment. The big donors and the big lobbies own the candidates. They own Washington. The wishes and vagaries of the "liberals" and the "conservatives" are window-dressing.

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In foreign affairs, the most critical issue for America is the Middle East, thanks to the Iraq quagmire, which is bleeding the U.S. Treasury for no purpose and destroying the U.S. Dollar and the U.S. Army. Iraq was predicated upon the 9/11 atrocities, which attacks were, in turn, blowback to America from a suborned foreign policy, pandering to the international Zionist network as it relates to American domestic politics. That relationship is huge, and the blowback has been enormous, but almost never discussed.

Zionism is not just an anathema to the Arabs. It has been recognized as a travesty by most objective observers who have actually studied the subject, but to no avail on American policy. Why? Because the most powerful political lobby on the American landscape is the so-called Israel Lobby. I say, "so-called", because it is so multifaceted and all-pervasive that it cannot be deemed just another Washington lobby. It is embedded into the very fabric of the American system of government. It has a hammer-lock on U.S. foreign policy.

This paramount reality has not been mentioned in the current campaign. It cannot be broached at any time, because it would result in the emperor-has-no-clothes moment of truth. That truth would be blinding, or at least embarrassing. It would be similar to the reaction of the village folks watching the parade in the Christian Andersen tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

If the subject were broached, then the  news media and the brain-dead Republicans--especially the “neoconservatives”--and the "liberal" Democrats would be obliged to confront and explain what has been going on behind the scenes that has driven policy and created all these unnecessary problems. The press and the politicians would rather not do that, for various reasons. 

The first and foremost reason is that the press and the politicians have been complicit, to a lesser or greater extent, and benefit from the current state of affairs. They have been co-opted. As long as the electorate at large remains essentially ignorant about the meaning of the Iraq war, and about all that led up to it, and about drives and determines U.S. Mideast policy, but instead continues to be diverted by phony and secondary issues, some of which are based upon outright lies, then those in authority in Washington are happy to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary is going on behind the scenes. Nobody wanders off the reservation of accepted ideas, because it might create a problem.

Everything is reduced to an inconsequential game. Which brings us back to the exhausting spectacle of the 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign. To Hillary “The Obliterator” and to her husband and partner in crime, Bubba. To Crackbrain McCain, the frontman for the "neocons" who seems dead-set upon continuing the Cheney-Bush madness at any cost. And to the wild card and new guy on the block with the unlikely name of Barack Obama.

Nobody knows what might happen with Obama as President, including Obama, but clearly many people from all backgrounds are positively desperate for a change of direction and leadership, no matter what, because they sense something has gone horribly wrong for Uncle Sam and the world.

Copyright Patrick Foy 2008