I think we need a new criteria for choosing leaders: imagination. If one can’t image a worst-case scenario, one certainly can’t prepare for it. The New York Times of September 3rd let the president tell of his own lack thereof:
“I don’t think anybody can be prepared for the vastness of the destruction,” Mr. Bush told reporters in Biloxi, after walking through streets of crushed cars and the occasional concrete stairway to nowhere. “You can look at a picture, but until you sit on that doorstep of a house that used to be, or stand by the rubble, you just can’t imagine it.”
Whoever we run in 2008 must be capable of great imagination – the ability to envision both a positive future so as to lay out an appropriate course, and the ability to imagine the consequences of some actions, and of not taking other actions. It’s not enough to ask for a brain. We need someone with the ability to exercise it in creative ways towards compassionate ends.
Bush continually says stupid things. Take today, for example, when he said that the effort will take more than one day and that he won’t forget what he’s seen.
If Bush would pay more attention to actual science, he wouldn’t even need to have an imagination to figure out what might happen. He was warned. That’s not a lack of imagination – just like the excuse for 9/11 – that no one could have imagined planes flying into buildings when they actually had NORAD exercises for such things – was a load of crap. He needs to pay attention. Period.
You two have very similar – and accurate – perceptions. I don’t think we need a new criteria so much as people who meet the existing. The country is beyond tired of the lesser of two weevils.