Respect for the President of the United States, what happened?

When I was a kid my grandfather used to say, " you don't have to agree with the President's policy but he's our elected President and deserves our respect and our help. If the President needs me to sweep his floor, then its my responsibility to sweep my ass off!"

These days I can't help but wonder what has happened to our ability to respect the President. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and I said we, as Americans, are such a nation of team players and if you don't play for our team then you're on the opposite team. Our mentality seems to be that, our team has to win and the other team has to lose no matter what.

Our elected politicians seem to forget, America is the team we are all playing for! Democracy elected our President, and just case everyone in Washington has forgotten, that means the majority of the country hired the President to run our country. It doesn't' matter if you are Republican, Democrat, or Independent, he's the man hired to do the job and its your responsibility to help him accomplish the job he was hired to do.

As the saying goes, if you can't respect the man, respect the office.

I'm not sure when respect for the President started to go away. It could have been when Nixon lied to congress, it could have been the Clinton sex scandal or it could have been G.W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished".

Frankly I don't know and I don't care. The President of the United States of America deserves our RESPECT, SUPPORT AND OUR HELP to get his job done, whoever he is. If you don't like the way he does his job, fine, then elect someone different when his term is up. But until then give the man respect and help to accomplish what we hired him to do.

I've voted every since I was old enough,. I was told, if you don't vote, then you can't gripe. I take voting very seriously and its my responsibility as an American. Right now I have to say I'm pretty ashamed of the congress and politicians I helped elect to office.

Hopalong Cassidy said, " If you want to be respected, you must respect others. Show good manners in every way."

I think everyone in government would be better off following that rule!

Just my opinion...

© copyright 2011 Michael Burke