excerpt for Chapter 2 - election results

excerpt from Chapter 2 page 37

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Henderson West was elected with 55.1% of the popular vote and received the highest number of individual votes ever in the history of presidential elections in the USA. That 55.1% of the popular vote represented over eighty million American citizens. This represented a tremendous mandate and an over-whelming personal vote of confidence from the American electorate.

excerpt from Chapter 2 - STAND UP AMERICA election campaign

excerpt from Chapter 2 - page 33

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The circumstance that I chose to be positive throughout my communications with the American public touched a lot of positive nerves as well.  As mentioned previously, by 2012 many people had been hurt by the recession and were extremely disillusioned and lacking a bit of faith in the American system.  My goal was to restore faith and confidence not only in America but in themselves.  Hence my election platform became STAND UP AMERICA.

STAND UP AMERICA became a rallying cry through the latter part of 2012 as a spirit of renewal took hold.   We as individuals have all been down at one time or another and the measure of any person’s strength is the ability to get going again.  This is the same for a nation, especially one as great as the USA.  The spirit of “standing up” for one’s own situation and then being responsible for improving ones personal state of affairs fuelled a culture of success and hard work that lead to a much more positive attitude within our borders and lead to an almost immediate recovery.

One of the difficulties we have as Americans is the ability to admit that maybe we make mistakes or that we can occasionally let ourselves down.  I’ve mentioned numerous times that we were embracing a culture of blaming others for what has happened in our individual lives but for most Americans to admit that they were wrong is just ludicrous.  Well, what I recognized and shared was that we had created our own mess through a very out-dated governmental model that was no longer relevant in the twenty-first century, a business culture that celebrated profit as the only reason for being and a citizen base that had lost its collective American spirit.  

ff21st -- Chapter 1 opening

Thinking back thirty years to January 20, 2013, I have to admit that I was a little disturbed and perhaps even terribly unhappy with my situation.  There I was, a self-appointed poster-child for disillusionment with almost all institutional aspects of America.  I had grown up at the end of the twentieth century and was pretty much willing to impugn any formal organization, public institution and quite likely most existing modern mindsets and “isms.”  I was hardly an anarchist though in any way, shape or form and I of course was a huge supporter of individual freedom, but there is no way I could have seen myself as part of the process at the time.  I had prided my personal success on being able to work-around process rather than immersing myself in it.

I also was an extremely successful businessman who had accumulated wealth well into the billions.  I can’t say I was disillusioned at all about that part of America as it had been simply a matter of hard-work, open-mindedness, a big chunk of fairness, a strong vision and of course a little bit of good luck and timing along the way.

I can honestly say that I was anti-government in most of its forms at the start of the twenty-first century.  In fact, one of the hallmarks of my business success had been the ability to manage governmental process and obstacles.  I had earned a reputation as someone who did not really listen to governmental authority and regulation if a greater good was being impeded.  I pretty much held government equally inept everywhere in the world.  The USA though at the time was the worst.

Government in the early twenty-first century, especially in the United States of America involved itself mostly in the pursuit of self-interest and party politics.  The Republican and Democratic parties basically just postured and opposed each other in order to undermine, disgrace and usurp the authority of whichever party, at the time, happened to have won the previous election.  To me, it was an absolute waste of time and energy that delivered virtually no benefit to the average American.  It was an elitist system that protected the interests of the party, business interests and the wealthy.  I had no interest in politics at the time and contributed no personal energy or corporate finances to it in the years leading up to 2013.

If you had, in fact, told me a year earlier, on my forty-second birthday in 2012, that I was going to be the next president, and that thirty years later my name would be synonymous with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson, I would certainly have thought you to be one of the dumbest people I had ever met.  There was no way in the world, that on March 31^st, 2012, that I could have imagined myself as president less than one year later.

This is why I was genuinely angry in January 2013 as I was being sworn in as the forty-fifth President of the United States of America.  I can honestly say that in the moment I really did not want the role and was wondering how I had just ruined my life.

The Presidency is Undemocratic

Obama or Romney.  It won't matter in the least.

Once again the lack of choice is testament to the undemocratic nature of the American political system.  On one hand you have a candidate who has failed miserably to inspire America and stem the downfall of the economic system and on the other hand you have a candidate who is an opportunist who has zero credibility in terms of leadership.  There really is no preferred choice.

The Presidency was designed to be a powerful leadership position for the entirety of the USA.  It was to be a position of intelligence, might, and most of all a defender of the Constitution and the multitude of freedoms that the USA was trying to establish in the world.  In our current era, the Presidency should be the number one defender of these same liberties.

The oath of office makes the Presidents role extremely clear.  


"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Over the years this oath has essentially been abandoned by the office of the President.  The Presidency has devolved into being merely a position for the top party representative.  This person ultimately is beholding and controlled by the parties themselves and the Constitution has been forsaken.  Therefore, the President does not represent America.

The democratic ideals and principals of the US have been completely usurped.