More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
- Woody Allen
This isn’t intended to put forward an argument for the best Presidential candidate; that’s an argument that will continue playing out over the next few months. I merely want to ask a question: Don’t we deserve a President who possesses intelligence and intellectual agility sufficient to the task of answering a simple question without resorting to bullshit and meaningless babbling? I don’t expect my President to be a Ph.D.- though that would certainly be a selling point. The honor and privilege of sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office should go to someone with the intellectual capacity to speak coherently, intelligently, and in complete sentences about how he/she plans to address the problems facing America.
I want my President to be someone who can address issues intelligently while also articulating a vision for moving this country forward. What I most assuredly do NO want is a President with the vocabulary of a schoolyard bully (“I have the best words.”) and the vision of a seven-year-old. It shouldn’t be too much to expect my President to be a person of integrity, moral courage, and possessed of the willingness and ability to stand up for ALL Americans. I don’t want my President to be someone for whom the office is little more than an extended spontaneous orgasm, the completion of a massive ego trip by someone who has no clue and even less conviction about how to move America forward.
We’ve had a constitutional scholar with degrees from Harvard and Columbia in the White House for going on eight years, and despite the intransigence and obstructionism of Republicans, Barack Obama has still managed to get stuff done. Yes, Republican douchebaggery prevented this President from accomplishing as much as we might have liked, but he pulled this country out of the depths of the Great Recession. Unemployment and gas prices have both dropped precipitously, and millions of Americans now have health insurance they didn’t have a few short years ago. Not bad given when he was up against.
Accomplishments like that aren’t going to come from a President who’s perfectly happy being the Dick-in-Chief and bullying those with the temerity to disagree with him. Politics isn’t like the business world; when conducted properly, it’s not a zero-sum game defining winners and losers. Those who understand and are committed to good governance understand that it’s about people, it’s about making America a better place for ALL Americans, not just the wealthy and powerful few.
Make up your own mind when it comes to who you want our next President to be. My only request is that you choose wisely, because once this country is turned over to bullies and thugs it will difficult to get it back. If you’re screaming “I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!!” now, just wait until you see what happens when governance is turned over to sociopaths primarily and only concerned for their self-aggrandizement and self-interest.
