Standing Up For Bob Menendez

by: Ambassador Joe Wilson

Mon Sep 25, 2006 at 11:59:22 AM EDT

I had the great pleasure to pass Constitution Day, Monday, September 18, in New Jersey, standing up for Bob Menendez.  It is always an honor to be invited to share my views on subjects of concern, and a responsibility I take seriously as a citizen to participate in the election of those who would lead us.  In fact, there is no greater expression of the contract that binds this nation together under the Constitution than free and fair elections.  And there have been no elections in recent American history where the stakes are so high and the differences between the parties so stark.  Are we going to allow this administration eight years of unaccountable government?  How many government failures are we going to tolerate before we wake up?  Aren’t Iraq and Katrina enough?  For how long are we going to allow the administration to squander our international leadership and make us less safe than before?  How much of the nation’s treasury are we going to permit the crony capitalists to plunder?  In short, are we going to continue down the path of failed policies and failed leaders as Bush-Cheney clone Tom Kean, Jr. wants, or are we going to hold the administration accountable by electing strong candidates like Bob Menendez?  These are the issues that frame the elections this year and why they are so important.

I do not know New Jersey well.  After all, I am from California and spent most of my adult life overseas as a diplomat, mostly in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.  That said, I have over the past several years come to know a number of members of the New Jersey Congressional delegation including Jon Corzine, Frank Lautenberg and Rush Holt.  Of all of them, I have known Bob Menendez the longest, having worked with him on issues of importance to his constituents when he was a Congressman and I was Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council in the Clinton administration.  Later, I came to value Bob’s counsel about the necessity to see the leak of my wife’s CIA identity as a national security issue rather than a partisan political squabble.  Bob was right about that even as the White House and its right wing echo chamber did everything possible to try to make the smear campaign “politics as usual” and to divert attention from its despicable acts.

After the press conference I accompanied the senator to the taping of an interview where he addressed many of the issues on the minds of New Jersey voters, and from there we attended a meeting of retired AFL-CIO members.  Having been a card carrying member of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners for several years before I became a diplomat, and nearing retirement age myself, I was delighted to spend even a few brief moments listening to concerns raised about job losses and the huge deficits being run up by the Bush administration.

My last stop with the Senator was at Rutgers University for a Constitution Day rally.

There I said a few words about the importance of the Constitution to me as the glue that holds this great diverse nation of ours together and projects values so admired in the rest of the world.  In the audience was one heckler calling for an apology to Karl Rove, but he was quickly shouted down by those for whom treason matters.

The Senator, at the rally, and elsewhere throughout the day, was articulate and passionate in his discussion of the issues that we face in these perilous times and appropriately scathing in his criticism of an administration that has taken the nation to the wrong war while making us less safe here at home, and looting the Treasury on behalf of its supporters.  It was a great day to be an American and to bask in what we too often take for granted – that discussion among friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens about the future of our country that we call election season.