Chris Jepson: Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President,

Thank you for your service to America. I appreciate your sacrifice.

I believe your election as president is an important national benchmark in race relations. Electing a black man to the White House was a necessary social hurdle to be achieved and you did, demonstrating imagination, grit and resilience. The United States is better off as a result of your presidency.

You entered office in 2009 under trying economic conditions. Republican leadership chose to be intransigent and obstructionist even before your assuming office. They determined from a political perspective to collectively oppose virtually anything that you advocated in an attempt to undermine public support for your presidency and administration.

The GOP’s sole goal was to deny your presidency any governing achievements and legitimacy. While this may be hardball politics, history will one day inevitably condemn this generation of Republicans as antithetical to what the United States required for these trying times.

The Republican Party of the early 21st century will be remembered as the party of small men pushing even smaller ideas. Worse, this generation’s GOP will be identified as wholly in-the-pocket of privileged special interests, of advancing a new Gilded Age of greed, an American plutocracy that plundered the American middle class for the benefit of the already fortunate few.

Now with the U.S. Senate lost to science deniers and simplistic anti-government Luddites, I anticipate, Mr. President, that your remaining two years will not only be frustrating for you but worse for America.

No doubt the Republican argument for mindless tax cuts for the wealthy and for the predictable and dangerous weakening of air, water and land regulations will have bill after bill on your desk for your signature.

Mr. President, I have a few recommendations for the remaining two years of your presidency.

Exercise the presidential veto. Make the Republicans override your veto of legislation antithetical to what is good for America. Resurrect an idea from Ross Perot; get out the blackboard and chalk and become the educator-in-chief. Hold press conferences in parts of America directly affected by Republican legislation. If it’s coal deregulation, talk about the importance of clean air, of the absolute abomination of plundering Appalachia through mountaintop removal, described as “strip mining on steroids.” Use the Bully Pulpit to call a questionable spade the dirty shovel it is.

Your decision on Cuba was spot-on and about time. Your early questioning of American military involvement abroad was sound, as well. Get us out of the Middle East. Get us out of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. We have no friends there. None of those nations would come to our defense. We do not share common values of democracy, pluralism, religious tolerance or a free press. We have no moral responsibility to spread our form of governance, particularly to the unreceptive primitives of the Middle East.

Argue that an economically strong America is our nation’s best defense and selling point (of American values) to the world. Advocate for continued reductions in the nation’s military/industrial complex with the savings invested in education, technology, infra-structure, renewables and scientific research.

Get America back in space in a big way. We, once-upon-a-time, had a space shuttle and now we’re back to launching 1960-type capsules. That is absurd.

I close, Sir, with what Harry S. Truman, an earlier Democrat President, had to say about Republicans, “I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.”

“Giv’um hell, Mr. President.