After Barack Obama entered the White House, I felt that his good fortune had run out, either with respect to how he got to the Senate or to how he became President. He inherited losing wars and a severe financial crisis from George W. Bush, to which the solutions were beyond human ability and needed nothing short of a biblical miracle. However, the angel of fortune who forsook Obama for two years soon returned to hold his hand, as we saw in the success of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. If this had failed, and American soldiers had died as a result, Obama's political future would have resembled that of Jimmy Carter. Carter lost the presidency, and the main reason behind this is the failure of the military operation he ordered on 24/4/1980, to free the hostages detained at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran following the Islamic revolution. This happened when a helicopter from the attack squadron crashed and another failed. Good fortune did not stop with the killing of bin Laden. I was examining the impact of the raid on the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, and found that it has greatly increased the President's popularity. However, I also found out that the possible candidates for the Republican Party, with the exception of two or three, are not fit for the presidency. It is extremely difficult for them to win the elections, with the assumption that the Republican Party will commit political suicide and choose one of them as its candidate. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty are both veteran politicians, while Gen. David Petraues, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, is reportedly a possible candidate even though he is poised to become the head of the CIA. There is also Mitch Daniels, the Governor of Indiana, and I shall return to him at the end of this column, and also Congressman Ron Paul, who is known in Congress as Dr. No because he is a doctor and because he opposes all government spending or waste. I did not forget Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, either, who are both from the Tea, or Espresso Party of course. I will no doubt return to the issue of Republican contenders for presidential nomination. However, I today opt to focus on one candidate who withdrew and another who is still running, and the candidates are Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich. I never saw Trump as a serious presidential candidate, but instead took him to be a fame-seeker. It did not surprise me that he withdrew from the race. He is a billionaire businessman who made his fortune in real estate, but is he really a Republican? His actions are Democratic. He, for instance, endorsed the healthcare bill, and is favor of taxing the rich, with the enthusiasm of Obama himself. He also donated to the Democrats more than he donated to the Republicans, and supported the campaigns of Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, both Democrats, to the Senate. Trump once said that Jimmy Carter is the worst president, and then said that George W. Bush is the worst president, and today, he is saying that Barack Obama is the worst president. But what is certain is that he would make the worst president if he enters the White House. Yet, at any rate, his chances declined greatly despite the overwhelming media coverage he enjoyed in the wake of the killing of bin Laden, and before it when Obama released his birth certificate dated 4/8/1961 in Hawaii, which Trump made the questioning thereof a major issue in his campaigns against the president. Thus, his withdrawal from the race must be the equivalent of raising the white flag. Trump divorced his wife Ivana, who was a professional tennis player before they married. The divorce was public and scandalous, and took place in 1992. However, Trump's history with women is dwarfed by Gingrich's. The latter divorced his first wife Jackie, as she underwent surgery in 1980, after an affair with the woman who became his second wife Marianne, whom he divorced in 1999, after a similar affair with a Congress staffer, when he was the Speaker of the House. She was 23 years younger, and later became his third wife. Her name is Callista Bisek. But it seems that Bisek is another story, and her sway on him is so strong that he converted to Catholicism for her. Gingrich led the campaign in Congress to impeach Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair, while he was having an affair with a young staffer in the Congress itself. However, his sex scandals are child play compared to his policies. He is a neoconservative, and an extremist who always stood against Arab and Muslim interests (He owns a film production company that made a film against Islamic radicalism). I find it extremely difficult that someone like Gingrich can win the presidency. I conclude with Governor Mitch Daniels, for whom I dedicated an entire article when his name was thrown into the lot in the presidential race a few months ago. Daniels is a budgetary expert. He is very practical and is well versed on how to cut public spending. Many Republicans are urging him to run for president, but he still has not made up his mind. He has so far not had any major sex scandals, and there is nothing in his personal history except that he and his wife Cheri divorced in the nineties, after which she left him with their four daughters aged from eight to fourteen. She remarried in California, but soon got divorced and got back together with Daniels three years later and they remarried. I shall no doubt return to this subject again in the future. [email protected]
