The Presidency: An awesome task

Henry S. Truman very aptly described how it felt to be president. "To be lonely," he said, "very lonely at times of great decision." Thomas Jefferson called it "A splendid misery", because it was an "unceasing drudgery and daily loss of friends". John F. Kennedy said it was "the worst job in the world". At the start of his term, John Fitzgerald Kennedy said that the presidency was "the key office". Shortly after, he added. "What a lousy, fouled-up job this has turned out to be".

The above must be part of the ordeal that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo must be discovering or experiencing. It was James A. Garfield who said that a president is "the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think". And indeed, even for people who are not as isolated as a president, it is very difficult to know just what the people desire for themselves and for their country. As to what the people think perhaps the real question is "Do they think at all?" We talk of people’s power, but we have yet to see a top politician successfully prosecuted in court.

The president is actually a living link in the long chain of his country’s history. What he is doing is making contemporary history. But he cannot be blamed for the times. The most historical event in the first year of the third millennium was the Sept. 11 terrorists’ attack in New York. The world has not been the same since and the economic slump is worldwide. It was a horrid way to start the era of the global village and the Information Age.

Today politicians shift from one party to another the way they change shirts. This is because political parties today have no national program. When one shifts from one party to another, he does not alter his political beliefs or stand on any national issue. All he does is change his partymates. We would like to go back to the days when political parties stood for a program.

President Macapagal-Arroyo has been quoted as saying that she has been making political mistakes left and right. We believe that what she means is that she has been offending politicians left and right. We believe that her main task is to come out with a program and, if possible, a time-table for the attainment of the goals in said program. The program, of course, should be geared to economic development, for that is where national progress lies. This is not as easy as it sounds because before you can successfully implement an economic program, you must have peace and stability in the nation, not to mention the financial means to pursue the program. At the moment, we are operating on a deficit.

We have big problems. But we have full faith that the Filipinos can overcome these problems. In 1945, we faced a much, much greater problem. Manila was the second most devastated city in the world and the Philippines was the sixth most ravaged country after World War II. Look at the progress our country has made since then. Manila is now a metropolitan city.

What we need is a sound program for progress.