DANCING WITH THE PRESIDENTS.....SPOTLIGHT ON BUSH 41..........

As I stated in today's other blog column, Former President George W. Bush is launching his presidential memoirs book tour, with a multiplicity of media interviews, tonight, tomorrow and this coming week.  In recent months we have seen much of Former President Bill Clinton obn the campaign trail.  And currently President Barack Obama is on a four country visit to Asia, starting in India, where we saw he and Mrs. Obama dancing with young people on Sunday.  That picture and the fact that the NBC Television Network is counterprogramming the number one show in prime time this tv season, ABC's "Dancing With The Stars", with President George Walker Bush's memoirs interview with Matt Lauer, gave rise to the title of this blog column.  And as I ponder it, "dancing" is an apt metaphor for what we do in relating to most recent Presidents.  After the rigors of a long, drawn out, electoral campaign, we choose a President and seemingly show very good support for them at the outset, but as soon governing sets in, the dance gets interrupted and we change partners, not comfortable in sticking with the one we brought to the dance with our support and votes, and seeking someone else to continue the next political/governance dance with.  There are no perfect candidates, there are no perfect politicians, and certainly there are no perfect Presidents.  But once we make our choice to elect someone to a 4 year term of office as President of the United States, we must set politics aside and allow leadership and governance to have an unobstructed opportunity to work in addressing national and international issues and affairs.  The constant, virtually ever ongoing, non-stop election campaigning and partisan sniping does not serve the best interests of our country, it denigrates it. So as we dance with our current and former Presidents into another term of governance, may our focus be for them and  all our citizens what serves, conserves, and preserves  the United States of America, and the common good of all our People...........Fr.  Troy