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| AP, explaining the “halo effect“. |
When a man is elected President of the United States of America, he has reached the pinnacle of his career in America. It is the top, the Everest, the highest and most visible point a man can reach. Where is there for him to go, afterward? What other fulfilling employment or charitable service can he then enjoy after the let-down of leaving office?
Bill Clinton gives speeches, makes money. CNN reported two years ago, ex-President Clinton
“earned $75.6 million giving speeches to corporations and organizations around the world, according to the latest financial disclosure required of his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”
–Washington and Jefferson retired to their plantations
–John Quincy Adams ran for Congress in 1830, the year after he left the White House, and served in the House of Representatives until he died in 1848.
–Benjamin Harrison returned to his law career.
–William Howard Taft, left the White House to become a law professor at Yale and was later appointed to the Supreme Court.
The question back then was “What was the young nation to do with these men who had held such immense power?”
And there’s the rub. Just because one descends from the highest office, it does not mean they give up their power. They have accumulated wisdom and experience that only 43 predecessors have ever accumulated, and given the fact that most ex-presidents are elected at a relatively aged point in their careers and die soon after, any ex-president living still has much to offer. He is a unique person.
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| Current (ex) Presidents, l-r: George HW Bush, Obama, George Bush Jr, Clinton, Carter |
When life spans were shorter, ex-Presidents usually died within a decade of their post-presidency. Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson did. But now that life spans have lengthened we’re giddy with ex-Presidents. In 1850 only 10% of men lived to age 70 and only 6% of men lived past age 80. Today we have five Presidents/ex-Presidents living. Jimmy Carter is 91 years old, as is George H.W. Bush. Bill Clinton is 69, as is George Bush Jr.
When Obama leaves office, he will be only 55 years old. Given his youth, one may expect him to live a long time. So what will he do…after?
It is commonly observed that President Obama never started governing because he never stopped campaigning. (source)
Obama has never seemed to enjoy being out of the political limelight. He was elected to his first political office in 1996 at age 35. He has never left the political arena. One surmises he is not planning a quiet retirement, as George Bush Jr has done.
Breaking Israel News published what is admittedly a rumor, that Obama is quietly campaigning for his next position: Secretary-General of the United Nations. Here is Breaking Israel News, reporting from the Arabic Kuwait News Al –Jarida:
Al –Jarida, an Arabic language Kuwaiti magazine, published an article on Friday claiming that US President Barack Obama has set his sights on becoming the next Secretary General of the United Nations when he leaves the Oval Office in one year.
If true, and if he succeeds in this endeavor, Obama would be replacing the present Secretary General, South Korea’s Ban Ki-Moon, who is serving his second five-year term in the position. Ban’s term as Secretary General is set to end December 31, 2016, coincidentally 21 days before Obama’s second term as President ends. Al-Jarida attributed the rumor to “informed sources” (source)
But it’s a rumor that makes sense, given a man who enjoys political power and the limelight as much as Obama does. Leading the United Nations is the one place that wields more power than leading the United States does. The UN is in NY, and though Obama is from Hawaii and has also lived in Chicago for many years, he has recently expressed interest in moving to NY City.
With just a year and change left of his final term in office, President Barack Obama is beginning to make plans for his post-presidency years. It’s looking like his official presidential library will be in Chicago, close to the Hyde Park home that he and First Lady have lived in for years. But recently, the President has apparently expressed interest in moving to New York City after the First Family leaves the White House…
Though the Kuwait News report is just a rumor, not a report, the Jerusalem Post did pick up on the notion that Obama is angling for the global position- AND that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly unhappy with the idea. Significantly, the Netanyahu Administration source did not deny the Prime Minister’s intent to oppose such an appointment.
Netanyahu remembers well just how US President Barack Obama brushed aside Israeli objections and went ahead with the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran. Now, Netanyahu is reportedly planning some personal payback. According to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida, Netanyahu will make common cause with moderate Arab governments in order to sabotage Obama’s plan to succeed Ban Ki-moon when the South Korean diplomat ends his term as United Nations secretary-general on December 31 of this year.
A source close to Netanyahu did not deny to Al-Jarida that the premier is aiming to “torpedo the Obama project,” noting that “his presidency was characterized by [Washington’s] moving closer to the Muslim Brotherhood, toppling the regime of Hosni Mubarak, and attempts to ally itself with political Islam.”
That relations between an Obama-led America and a Netanyahu-led Israel are frayed is an understatement. That the United Nations is a bastion of Israel-hating politicos pumping out poisonously biased and damaging resolutions against Israel is also well-known. An Obama-led UN would be a nightmare for tiny Israel.
The rumor has some credibility. Even back in 2014 the Investor’s Business Daily Editorial noted that even at that point, Obama seemed to be angling for UN Secretary-General.
The president obviously agrees; his address to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday sounded much like the launch of a campaign for still-higher office: presiding over the hopelessly corrupt, tyrant-dominated United Nations.
The UN Secretary-General is the UN’s top diplomat. Though the post’s qualifications are loose and general, Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize, bestowing credibility to Obama in his apparent skill to negotiate between international parties. In 2008, Newsweek noted that “Obama can turn a disjointed screed into reasoned consensus”. Obama already has experience at the UN, being the first-ever U.S. president to chair the United Nations’ 15-member Security Council. And of course his 8 years as leader of the free world is weighty experience the UN diplomats would consider.
Now the U.N., acting similarly, can make him “president of the world.” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s term expires in early 2017. If Obama were his successor, the U.S., even under a Republican administration, might not veto an ex-U.S. president in the Security Council.
Who would the U.N. like better as secretary-general than an American who wants the world’s lone superpower placed firmly under the rules made by the U.N. General Assembly, the vast majority of whose members are undemocratic and pine for redistributed U.S. wealth? A secretary-general who can get the U.S. to accept U.N. rule.
Obama’s past pattern of actions indicate anything from a bias against to a virulent hatred for Israel (depending on whom one consults). Certainly it is reasonable to say that Obama’s decisions have not favored God’s Country. Given the UN’s past behavior, at the United Nations he can do even more damage to that tiny country. It is also true that he can accrue more power and influence, something he has been an expert at doing his entire adult life.
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| Official flag of the UN. World with olive branches, symbolizing peace |
What the future holds is something that Christians can read in the Bible, which is God’s word. We know that at some point in the future, the rapture will occur and true Christians representing the Bride (AKA the Church) will be removed from the earth. The resulting chaos will give rise to ten global leaders, one of which will soon dominate the other nine, and emerge as the sole tyrant of earth. He will initially seem to befriend Israel by making a covenant with them, only to tear it up at the covenant’s mid-point, sparking the Great Tribulation. There will be a one world power and one tyrant ruling the earth. This ruler is known as the Antichrist, the Man of Perdition, who will martyr the Tribulation Saints and cause a genocide for Israel. (Daniel 8, Daniel 11, Revelation 13)
How the United Nations fits into the coming biblical promise of a one world government is anybody’s guess. The fact that the UN is already a global governing body seems like it would fit in well to a coming prophesied larger global governing body. Did you know that the UN has a standing army of “peacekeepers” 97,000 strong?
The United States has been in a status quo for the last 8 years. Wikipedia defines Status quo as a Latin phrase meaning the existing state of affairs, particularly with regards to social or political issues. Even though the Obama Presidency has not seemed to live up to the glowing expectations of the giddy campaign, even a gloomy and unhappy but relatively stable status quo is better than what many other nations have endured during the same time period. However, as James Michener famously wrote in his novel Hawaii, “It is difficult to be king when the gods are changing.”
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Further Reading
UN Secretary-General, qualifications and election
I wrote in 2011: Obama for UN Secretary General?
I wrote in 2009: Obama taking over presidency of UN Security Council
the-end-time.org 