There once was a time when we wanted the best and the brightest in charge. Not any more. Now it's more important to have someone we'd want to hang out with be in charge of the free world.
With all due respect...I love my friends. I have a great time when I hang out with them. They make me laugh and occasionally laugh at my jokes. But under no circumstances do I want any of them to be president. Because they would do a terrible job. And I would certainly hope they would say the same thing about me...because I would do an even worse job than them.
I'm just about fed up with the notion that just because a candidate might not enjoy scarfing down pork rinds and Lowenbrau while watching the monster truck rally and has read a book or two (possibly one that has been banned from at least one library) that he or she is some sort of "elitist" and less qualified to run the country.
America was created by elitists. I can guarantee there were very few "Joe Ale Flagons" at the First Continental Congress...and certainly no "Cricket Moms". John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were some of the smartest men who ever walked the planet. They were educated lawyers, scientists, inventors and philosophers who had passionate views about their society and culture and what's more, they could discuss these views in an intelligent fashion.
So, when it comes to guiding this great nation you better believe I want the most educated, most informed and most intellectual politicians we can get. I want someone smarter than me...and quite frankly, I'm pretty smart to begin with.
You want someone you'd like to have a beer with in office? Fine...nominate them for County Commissioner or Dogcatcher. I want my President to be too busy working for the American people to have time to hang out with me.
1 comment:
Chris the problem with the Democratic candidate is not that he is an elitist (which he is). It's not that he isn't a likable and engaging persona (at least from what I have been able to determine from his tv acts). The issue that America has with this guy is the fact that he is a socialist and given that socialism has a very short half-life only compounds matters. This is why Obama is struggling in the polls with only a narrow edge over McCain. This election should be a lay-up for the Dems with all of the economic issues going on. Yet the race is still tight....
Your nominee is taking fire from all directions for scandals and associations with person of dubious character (Reverend Wright, Tony Rezco, etc). Is there not a trusted friend among the throngs of Obama supporters that can stand up and deflect some of this criticism? Where are this guys friends? It doesn't seem as if Obama has any close friends that can vouch for his character. He is still very much an enigma and that isn't going to suffice in winning the trust of the voters. Obama is aloof, which I don't see as somewhat of a bad thing unless you are running for President.
His only advocate is his wife and she isn't very palatable to the American public (aside from the far-left Dems). All of this doesn't add up to a winning ticket IMO.
As for America being founded by elitists, I would simply say that the Founding Fathers were probably more approachable than our modern politicians are. US presidents didn't get SS protection until 1901 and a lot of the early sketches of the White House don't even show a fence around the perimeter; unrestricted access was the order of the day. At the end of the Philadelphia convention in 1787, a woman came face-to-face and tasked Benjamin Franklin with "What have you wrought?" "...a Republic," was his reply, "if you can keep it." Face-to-face encounters among the general populace are not the makings of elitists.
I tend to think that we underestimate the intelligence of the previous generations, and in my admittedly limited study of the colonial period the citizens at that time were politically aware in a way that we today could not hope to match. I mean any man who would pick up his flintlock and go send some well-aimed shots downrange at the advancing Redcoats on the morning of April 19, 1775 is doing something different from what we do today. Pull out a rifle today and most everybody will think you are the latest reincarnation of the Unabomber or Tim McVeigh.
In short we need politicians that are of the people and for the people, and yes they do need to be smart but they don't need to be Socrates. Governing effectively isn't rocket-science and we would be better served having a philistine in office than a philosopher.
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