Harlingen, Texas, July 8, 2008:  When I view what is happening to America during this presidential election campaign, I can’t help but feel our country is headed toward one of those failed marriages we all know occur all too frequently.

Men and women, the world over, have become the wreckage of such relationships.  Most of you know what happens.  One person tries to woo another person.  He or she says all the right things, makes all the right moves, and has a song to sing that is filled with all the right lyrics.  This person presents a wonderful appearance and the sweetest sounding of voices.  The other party is deeply smitten.

Now for the individual who is so deeply charmed by this courtship, all who voice opposition or concern become harsh and unbelievable.  It is only after the marriage vows and a short honeymoon have taken place that reality starts to rear its ugly head.

Soon that innocent partner starts to look at things below the surface in the character and conduct of this new mate.  The right things are no longer spoken.  The right moves have become distorted.  That sweet song now resounds flatly and that long admired appearance and wonderful voice have disappeared forever.
Barrak Obama’s courtship of America strikes me as one of those relationships many of us used to warn our friends and loved ones to turn away from before they were severely burned.

It also brings back to mind that most of those warnings went unheeded.  The wooed party embraced with affection the one initiating the courtship.  For all too many who entered into such dangerous relationships the end result was extreme pain, financial ruin, emotional scars, lost faith, and tattered lives that would take decades to repair.  It was only after everything had crashed and burned that they turned back to you with the words, “I should have listened to what you were telling me.”

By now all of America knows Obama is courting it.  The things any country or any person in a new relationship do not know about him now become an important, if not the supreme issue.  Is everything he says the truth, or is he presenting those right words and right moves just to woo the country?  Is his song really sweet, or is it the same old lies coated in a gloss to capture our hearts?  Will accepting him and what he says result in all of us being faced with a fraud and a charlatan dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit?

Failed marriages are filled with the pain of cheating, falsehoods, frauds and philandering. Some even experience the trauma of multiple crimes.  Many of these relationships have reeked such havoc on the other partner that recovery was next to impossible.  At this precarious time in our country, can America really afford another failed marriage?

Semper Fidelis
Tom Segel