As I look at the earnest smiling face of a young man who went to the same college as I and read his words, I am astounded by the naiveté that he and my classmates have about the nature of government. They believe that somehow having the appropriate person steering the crushing power of the Federal Government and it myriad of laws, life is suddenly.better. In their case, it is Obama and the Democrats. It could just as easily have been what passes for Republican in today's world. They believe that they are the beneficiaries of the government if only he is captaining that ship.
The Ship of State is incapable of being steered. It is coursing full speed at a shoal of rocks and only unstoking the engine of bureaucracy of  its fuel of laws will slow it down. That is done in Congress and the Senate, not the Presidency.
Those rocks? Those rocks include the boulders of  the collapse of our currency under an overburden of debt, the destruction of the middle class,  the end of what manufacturing is left in the US, and being sunk by a tidal wave of ever more inexpensive labor. These boulders on shore are surrounded by the rip-rap of the end of our medical system, further diminishment of racial harmony, a loss of domestic tranquility, further loss of freedoms, and perhaps even national sovereignty. And ultimately even starvation. Needless to say (and to continue the metaphor) there are those moonrakers, domestic and foreign, who greedily await our nation running aground to pick up the spoils.
Pete, Dianne, Dave, Felicia, Warner, and the rest somehow do not recognize that they also will be throw over the side to drown, not merely Republicans. They do not have some special life jacket because they believe. We will sink or swim while carrying the dead weight burden of our government. And with any karma at all, the ones who have riding on the backs of others will the be first to drown.