Political season

These days one can expect unreasonable insults and criticisms against President GMA for anything she does from the Opposition. It has to if it is to wrest power from the sitting government. Having employed every tactic in the book for ousting an elected leader, President GMA is still there.

I suspect that is the source of the unusual virulence of the campaign. It is fed by the frustration from that failure and the fear that if she cannot be ousted, then she is here to stay. No amount of assurance from her can change that. The problem comes as much from the Opposition’s failure to oust her and there is nothing she can do about that. She had to defend herself since the continuing plot to oust her in 2005 and she’s still hanging on. That is the background of the unusual ferocity of the campaign of May 2010.

So if I were her, I would take it with a grain of salt when the Opposition and other critics tell her what to do and who to appoint — it is still her administration up to June 30 — and she remains responsible for what happens within that period. It would be just as wrong if the President were to be guided by prescriptions dictated by the opposition’s interests.

That is true of her appointment of the chief justice of the Supreme Court as it is with her appointment of the chief of staff of the armed forces. She must be guided by the mandate given to her as Chief Executive of the country albeit she must act always according to the laws of the land and that is not necessarily what the Opposition wants either.

At the same time, we reinforce democracy by allowing critics and oppositionists to have their say. That is the nature of political warfare in an open society. As she has correctly said her job is not to appease her critics but to do what needs to be done to fulfill her mandate as President until she ends her term on June 30.

If she were to do otherwise and listen to her critics and their cohorts in media the only way she can appease them is for her to appoint a chief justice or a chief of the armed forces according to the Opposition’s liking.

Foolish. That is not the way to lead or run a country. Neither is it the way to conduct yourself if your enemies are after blood.

As an aside, if critics are against the President’s appointments because of their perceived closeness to her, the same could be said of some choices for presidential candidates of the Opposition. Neither do they inspire the confidence of the electorate.

Why, for example, should someone so unqualified, other than he is a son of democracy icons, be their choice to lead this country and how to solve its complex problems? It can also be suggested that on his own volition, Noynoy should refuse to run to be president when he knows he is not qualified. Tell that to the marines. But that sort of evens up the score between a president who appoints those she likes and an opposition that puts up a candidate they like, no matter how unqualified. Should we not start worrying about electing a clueless president also? I don’t hear any noises from the moralistic Black and White Movement.

Maybe the Liberal Party should practice what it preaches and change its presidential candidate to someone more competent.

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Again if you think that it only happens in the Philippines, you are wrong. The same trivial pursuits and foibles happen in American presidential campaigns so we should not have an inferiority complex about our own. John Heilemann and Mark Halperin have documented them in their book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.

The book is the story of the 2008 American Presidential campaign and there are similarities. After all, as a pundit once said, “we are copycats of America’s government and politics”. Maybe the guys and gals close to the local campaign scene can start taking down notes so they too can write a similar potboiler on the May 2010 elections.

According to the book when “Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, tells the Clintons that Hillary has finished third in the Iowa caucuses: “McAuliffe’s words landed like a roundhouse right on the Clintons’ collective jaw.”

“Barack Obama hits town as a newly minted United States senator: “He was smarter than the average bear, not to mention the average politician, and he not only knew it but wanted to make sure that everyone else knew it, too,” write Heilleman and Halperin.

The authors report that Presidential candidates and the members of their entourages are inordinately fond of the word “f__k”.  New Yorker can spell out the word but I can’t. This is the Philippines but then Filipino politicians do not use words when they get angry or disappointed. They often use something more lethal.

Here’s a sample of a conversation that took place in the Clinton campaign.” When McAuliffe first learned the outcome from his number crunchers, what he thought was, Well, we’re f__ked.

“Why the f__k do you think I’d want to go sit outside a Wal-Mart and hand out leaflets?”

“Unf__king believable!” Clinton said, and shook with fury.

“F__k you! F__k, f__k, f__k, f__k, f__k, f__k, f__k, f__k, f__k, f__k!!!”

Even Obama is overheard to indulge: “No f__king discipline” is his diagnosis of the chaos in McCainworld. “

 Hendrik Hertzberg, in his review of the book wrote Sarah Palin denounced the devastating portrait of her as “gossipy anonymous accusations” and as “irrelevant” to “what is important in this world today.” (“The rest of America doesn’t care about that kind of crap,” she told Bill O’Reilly.) The portrayals of the rest of the cast are reasonably consistent with what informed readers already knew, with flaws and foibles usefully filled out. Palin emerges as even more ignorant than one supposed, and considerably more unstable.

Obama is the only principal whose aides do not experience moments of suspicion — or, in the cases of Edwards and Palin, weeks of certainty — that their candidate is unfit for the office that he or she seeks. Only the future President is exactly what he seemed to be: calm, determined, a little aloof, immune to the snares of anger or vengefulness. “Game Change” leaves one reassured that the voters, given the choices before them, chose well.”

We have American campaign 2008 and Philippine campaign 2010. Find the similarities.