Faulty Wiring

Reign. October 11, 2007

Recently, I’ve been concerned about the possibility of questionable methods of maintaining power in Pakistan and Russia being repeated by the Bush administration. After all, if Cheney can exist in a phantom 2.5th branch of government between the executive and legislative, he might manage to find a rift in the space-time fabric large enough for him to remain in power past the end of the universe itself. Of course, if Bush wants to stay in power, he’ll use a much blunter method, like creating an office of Burger King or something like that.

Pakistan’s leader, Pervez Musharraf, the Chief of Army Staff who took power in a coup, promised he would return the nation to civilian rule if re-elected for president, by turning over the army chief post to a crony. Musharraf has been fighting judges for months, trying to prevent elections from being held, but in the end, he managed to win with 98% of the vote. Similarly, Vladimir Putin has just appointed Viktor Zubkov, who has “no visible political ambitions” to the post of the Prime Minister of Russia, and the two will likely switch places at the end of Putin’s presidential term. But here in the U.S., if a Republican candidate were to somehow win in November 2008, it wouldn’t be very smart of them to put anyone from the Bush administration in their Cabinet. Also, Bush doesn’t have the audacity to suddenly raise the terror alert level in January 2009 so that he can institute martial law and remain in power that way. Although, if he did, I can’t see Pelosi and Reid putting up a serious resistance to it.