Scrabman/a look back at my presidency...

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a look back at my presidency... is an article written by former United States President scrabman after leaving the office. In the article, published in his newspaper A Civil Society, he looks at the issues he considers his greatest accomplishments as the longest-serving president in United States history.

a look back at my presidency...

I am in the last hours of my Presidency. By my count I've been President for about 108 days and they have been interesting. Many people have asked me what I've accomplished as President. I thought I'd list a few of the major points.

• Federal Budget - A major push for me was to establish a Federal budget where control of the spending rested within Congress and a person who they appointed to be responsible for the funds. There were many people who were instrumental in getting this done but Ananias was the one who helped me the most with this along with hokiehigh and One Eye. We now have a Congressional Budget Office that controls all the funding and all branches of government have voluntarily submitted to a budget process rather than a free-for-all feeding frenzy whenever money was available. In the old days, it was the President who was responsible for all this and there was little tracking or accountability. The President still has his funding but it is a much smaller slice of the pie.

• War Games/Wellness Boom - I can't say that war games were my idea but I got them rolling and kept them going and we've seen a huge wellness boom because of it. When war games started many citizens decried them as useless and how they wanted "real war" without realizing the terrible costs and risks of real war (it truly wrecks the economy). Since these have started we've seen a huge increase in the battle ranks of our citizens and across the board in our military. We now have many more  Generals and even  Field Marshals than we had 4 months ago due in large part to the war games. Further, we've seen our economy actually stabilize as prices have gone down on all our products and citizen wellness has increased the productivity of those companies and I have citizens who message me daily asking when the next fight will be so they can manage their wellness. For the war games I have to thank Publius, Harrison Richardson, Equality 7-2521, and Nithraldur most of all.

• Neutrality/FORTIS - When I started as President ATLANTIS had been having problems for some time. I tried my best to work within ATLANTIS but eventually, the situation became untenable. It was the German/Sweden conflict that really did ATLANTIS in, however, as a series of poor decisions led to that conflict dividing the membership. I pushed the USA into neutrality and took a lot of flack for it. But out of that neutrality, we have several new alliances coming up to take the place of ATLANTIS (but not to become ATLANTIS clones). Harrison Richardson, ProggyPop, and Inwegen have been instrumental in building the new FORTIS alliance that is about to be launched ... under Harrison Richardson's leadership the project has blossomed.

• Citizen Programs - We already had a Welcoming Committee and PrincessMedyPi had worked hard on that as well as had GoBucks and others. During my term I saw Cerb, Ligtreb, and especially SirEkim build this program into a powerhouse with programs like Meals on Wheels, MASH, and others to reach out to new players and to revitalize old players who needed wellness boosts. These are the things that we will need to grab new players and keep them interested in the game and I hope to see the new President work to build these even more. The trifecta who ran these programs during my term built it up using the model that we used in the USWP of efficient management and high involvement of the various workers and helpers such as Tiacha, HeadmistressTalia, and Aren Perry. It is a program to be proud of.

• The White House Briefing Room - Bringing the White House into the media was initially the idea of Tiacha and our first ever White House Press Secretary Claire Littleton. It was from Claire that I learned the importance of using the media from how she ran her personal newspaper and we worked to try to keep Official Press Releases in the Top Five at all times when we had critical incidents to report so that we could amend the articles and make sure that our citizens knew where to go to get official information. mjdiv has taken the office of White House Press Secretary to new levels over the last two months and I hope that the next President continues to fight the information war by keeping a handle on how our enemies abuse our media.

• The Situation Room (in the Forums) - Most people will never see the President's Daily Briefs that were created for me every day by members of my cabinet and staff. As Forum Administrator I created the first Oval Office section of the US Forums but the previous President didn't much use it. I certainly have done so as I've delegated so many responsibilities due to the fact that there is just no way to keep up with everything as one person. Thus, it is through this section that I kept apprised of what was going on in the world and in the USA and I thank all of those who have participated and made it work. I hope that the new President finds it as helpful as I have. It has also been extremely helpful to have the participation of our Speakers of the House like Kyle321n, Cromstar, and now Ananias who have all been wonderful advisers.

• Diplomacy/PTO Defense - When I worked to take away the power of the purse from the President's hands there were many who said that I made the Presidency an unimportant office. However, the primary role of the President in RL is to be the chief diplomat of the country. It is in this way that I've tried to re-establish the importance of the Presidency and people like Inwegen, Harrison Richardson, Huskerguy77, Ogdensign, Wade Seagrave, Publius, Josh Frost and others have helped to make this possible with a larger and better run state department. Through these efforts we've also tried to form anti-PTO teams to prevent the dreaded Political Takeovers that happen every month around the world. These efforts have been more successful than I would have thought.

• 'Military Readiness - I can't take credit for the military and their readiness but I've contributed what I can. When I started as President the military seemed ready to boil me in oil thinking that I was going to tear them apart and that is why I've run with Military VPs like Moishe and Bastion as I've wanted to work to build trust and organization within the military. It's true that I wasn't happy with how the military was working when I took office. There was a high emphasis on tanking to the exclusion of using regular troops, the Army was quite disorganized after being a very efficient organization before I was a politician, and each time that operation came up all the branches tried to get their funding to the exclusion of the others. We now have a leaner and meaner military thanks to the efforts of Leroy Combs, Moishe, Eugene Harlot, Armandez, qn20, Bastion, Istarlan, Joseph Schmo, tdwester, loftedraptor and many others and we've restructured the military into more divisions that are better able to respond to threats. All of the branches submitted to budgeting funding and have become even more successful by sharing the pie. Our military has staged several great campaigns during my term and I'm happy to have seen that happen and to have helped where I could.

• Game Mechanics Awareness - I've tried to keep as my closest advisers the people who understand how this game works. People like Publius, One Eye, Pearlswine, Leroy Combs, and Eugene Harlot have been instrumental in this effort. I've tried to write articles, as have the others, to help people understand how game mechanics work vs. the role playing aspect of eRep. If we are going to be a world powerhouse we have to be more focused on these aspects of the gameplay.

• World Stature through Stability - I've tried to keep our nation stable over my term. While many have said that this is simply "playing it safe" there is more to it than that. I've hoped to increase our prominence in the world through all of the efforts listed above and I thank all of those who have helped me in that task. I've listed some of them here and I want to be clear that there are so many others who have helped. I can't begin to list them all because there are so many. If I try to list all of those who I thank this article would be impossibly long and I would surely miss someone and hurt their feelings. I've probably already done that. So thank you to everybody ... you know who you are.

• Q5 Hospitals - Oh yeah ... I almost forgot. Q5 hospitals in New Jersey and Kansas as well as one for Ireland that we helped pay for as thanks for the war games.

Good luck to the next President. May he be successful in his efforts and continue to build on what has come before to make the USA the greatest nation in the world.

Citizen scrabman