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Who better to speak about a sitting president than someone who has done the job? If a past president perceives the sitting president as having made a huge misstep that threatens to do harm to the country, why would they not speak out? Only two past presidents have openly disapproved of action taken by our current president. Not bad, all thing's considered.

It has been implied that speaking against the sitting president is unpatriotic, yet freedom of speech is one of our claims to fame as Americans. We are allowed to criticize the president. Any American can criticize the president, and a past president is in a unique position to do so. A past president understands how things work in the White House and certainly has the same rights as any other American to speak his mind.

The federal government of the United States is comprised of three branches. The legislative branch, Congress, is the equal partnership of Senate and House of Representatives. They propose laws which the president can veto. The judicial branch, well, they do the judge, court, jail, police kind of things. The three work independently to make a check and balance system to keep one person or group from having too much power. When things go wrong in the U.S. it is logical to blame the president and his administration since they comprise the executive branch of our government and are responsible for making the decisions that affect the daily running of the country.

The relationship between the three branches can be smooth or rocky depending on the parties holding seats in the House and the Senate. With predominately Republican legislative, judicial, and executive branches as we had at one point in W's tenure there was a one-sided government that lost its check and balances thereby giving the president more power than intended by the founding fathers.

Armed with too much power and access to more information than most of us only means he has more responsibility to make decisions that are good for the country and not abuse his power. When a bad decision is made, someone credible needs to say so. One of the most credible is a past president having experience and a frame of reference from which to form an educated opinion. A past president would understand which decisions were made by the president and not his minions or even another branch of government, so can be counted on to know when to call him out.

We are currently spending trillions of dollars to continue to occupy Iraq and fight in Afghanistan;

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