Editor, Manteca Bulletin,
Don’t ever let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment there was Camelot.”  This lyric came from Alan J. Lerner’s Broadway Musical Camelot.  Lerner was a Harvard classmate of former President John F. Kennedy and as fate would have it, Kennedy’s widow Jacqueline created the story book image of Camelot for the masses after JFK’s tragic assassination in 1963.  Jacqueline succeeded in creating a fairy tale depiction of JFK’s Presidency, the First Family, and the period in which they occupied the White House.  
Fast forward to January, 2017 and we have Camelot 2 in the embodiment of Barack Obama,  the newly departed “Hope and Change” President gained the admiration and even unabashed adulation of a majority of Americans. They conveniently overlooked his lack of qualifications and inexperience that resulted in a myriad of poor decisions and mistakes he made while governing our nation.  Contrary to his parting claims of accomplishments and leaving us “better off now by every measure than when he took office,” Obama has left Americans more divided and less hopeful.     
Domestically, he championed a poorly constructed healthcare system that is imploding, left us with a lingering distrust and lack of respect for law enforcement officers, deep racial divisions, a myriad of executive orders and regulations that stifle economic growth, and a national debt that has doubled to $20 trillion.  Many of our executive branch agencies have been politicized, including the Justice Department under Holder and Lynch, the IRS, EPA, and even our Intelligence Agencies under Clapper and Brennan. 
 Internationally, our allies no longer trust us and our adversaries don’t fear or respect us.  Russia is running rampant, having annexed Crimea from Ukraine and allied militarily with Syria’s murderous dictator Assad.  China is claiming and building military islands in the South China Sea in violation of U.N. Resolutions in an effort to control the commercial shipping lanes.  Iran has embarrassed our Navy by capturing two small ships in the Persian Gulf, forcing our sailors to kneel before their captors and continues to harass our naval warships in the region.  We lost four brave Americans in Benghazi, including our Ambassador, thanks to our ill advised military intervention in Libya to depose Qadaffi.  Organized Islamic Terrorist Groups have grown and spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa because of America’s premature withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. The first major Islamic Terror Attack in America during Obama’s watch at Ft. Hood, Texas was mis-labeled as “Workplace Violence,” and subsequent attacks were called “Violent Extremism.”
 So now “Camelot 2” has handed over a mess to his successor, Donald Trump.  Because Trump is a polar opposite personality to Obama, over half of the American people resent, hate, or fear him.  Camelot he is not!  Let’s just wait and see what he does as our new President and judge him by his results and long term accomplishments, not his sometimes abrasive personality.  Sadly, the Trump haters refuse to give him the benefit of the doubt. Many of them are already calling for his impeachment.  Ironically, those very same people were so enamored with Obama’s “grace, style, and dignity”, traits more befitting royalty than pragmatic leaders, that they are unwilling or incapable of recognizing the damage he has done to America,  History measures leaders by their overall effectiveness and accomplishments, not by their personality or popularity polls.  Liberals just don’t seem to understand or grasp the difference. 

 Bob Teglia
Manteca