Joke candidates tend to give joke answers to easy questions. I guess there are some people who think it’s easy to be president of the United States and that anyone can do it. Do you remember when candidate George W. Bush demonstrated that he didn’t know the names of the leaders of India, Pakistan, Taiwan, or Chechnya? Obviously, most people can’t name them either, but most people aren’t trying to be commander-in-chief of the world’s most lethal arsenal. Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather Pizza, doesn’t have a clue what the words “Right of Return” mean in a Palestinian context. What that shows is that Mr. Cain is approximately 100% ignorant of the history of negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Again, that doesn’t separate him from the average voter, but it does mean that he has no business thinking he’s knowledgeable enough about foreign affairs to be in change of them.
I don’t think this position that I’m taking is an elitist position. Anyone should be able to become president. But there’s hard work involved in making yourself qualified for the position. Before you announce to the world that you are a candidate for president, you should have already done that hard work.
We have a right to expect our leaders to be highly educated and highly knowledgeable in ways that we are not. Unfortunately, the party that gives us Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle and George W. Bush and Sarah Palin doesn’t value book-learning or broad experience in the wider world. A graduate degree (in anything but business school) and a passport are almost disqualifiers for the Republican base.
Herman Cain probably just gained a few points in the polls by demonstrating that he doesn’t waste time thinking about foreigners and their stupid conflicts.
No so sure any of the current R candidates know there’s any difference between a crispy Israel and an overcooked pizza.
Where do they come up with these guys? Is there any equivalent to this on the Democratic side? I guess the ex Burger King CEO wasn’t available.
“Elitist” doesn’t come into the picture — the leftie obsession with it is one of the downsides of 1960s rhetoric. It was never intended that democracy be the vehicle for ignorance to triumph. It was intended that it provided the means to discover the truest and the best.
Unfortunately in America, at least, “elite” as predictable become indistinguishable from “rich”. so we end up with “elites” like Beck, Bush, Romney, and Trump.
Not elitist. Anyone can become president as long as they can do the job. I’ll say that the rich tend to be better prepared for it in terms of skills, but I attribute that to actual elitism that prevents people from lower socio-economic classes from the environmental advantages that come with money in this country.
It’s making sure everyone can be so advantaged so everyone can actually succeed to their realized potential that is what it means to be of the left.
This is a variation on a theme I heard a lot, for example, from Palin supporters who wanted her in higher office because “she’s just like me.”
Well, no, she’s not: she’s a staggeringly rich, ambitious, vindictive publicity whore who employs a team of publicists and strategists to project an image that’s she’s “just like you.” But set that aside.
I don’t want the most powerful person on earth to be just like me. I really don’t. I want them to be smarter, harder working, more experienced, better under pressure, and more honest than I am. For a start. I want them to be the best of the best of the best. I also want them to share my values, of course, but I want them to be able to implement those values far better than I ever could. That’s not elitism; that’s pragmatism, because it’s a hard job and regardless of who gets it, I don’t want to see them fuck it up.
The worst president in US history got elected in large part through three things: fraud, his name, and the ability to convince a lot of guys that he’d be a great person to have a beer with. You’d think we’d have figured out what a crappy criterion that last one is. Thing is, the people who want a leader just like them also tend to be the people least qualified to lead anything at all.
this is funny.
I admit I haven’t been getting too excited about the trouble the GOP has been having finding a suitable Presidential candidate because I’ve figured their powers-that-be will find a solution by next January. Probably get someone who the media will agree to pretend is a centrist (see: McCain, 2000, 2008; GWB: 2000, 2004) and throw the base a bone with the VP pic.
But, reading a Digby post about Huntsman’s convention intro speech for Palin in 2008 I’ve thought back to the problems McCain had finding a VP and am starting to think maybe Booman isn’t just thinking wishfully about the GOP’s presidential nominee.
Seriously, the reason McCain picked Palin was by process of elimination — back to the wall, he picked someone who was completely unknown and I suspect he figured that his team could get the compliant media to agree to pretend she was an independent/centrist type and ignore the parts of her track record that contradicted that. As they had for McCain. And probably they would have were she not quickly shown to be a blithering idiot.
But the key is that all the other VP possibilities were eliminated either because they would alienate middle-of-the-roaders or alienate the base. Consider that the GOP had a small set of very qualified female politicians but every one is pro-choice, so none made the cut.
Interesting. They created a massive propoganda machine, the most effective in history, and now have about 1/4 of the population in a perpetual state of groupthink. For decades they’ve been training their voting base to be happy with a few scraps of policy changes thrown their way while the GOP powers focus on the real policy changes they want (help the rich, screw the poor). But now their Frankenstein monster of a voting base is too strong to be placated with little changes, and too far outside reality to be demanding anything that anyone outside the base would endorse.
it’s freaking hilarious watching them hoist on their own well-sharpened petards.
venal/stupid is a hella binary to sell, even with all the best liars in the world busting their tits trying.
the psychic bubblebrane immunising republicans from reality is getting mighty thin, couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of rich old white guys, lol
keep trotting out the freakshow and watch the mighty osama-smiter take ’em down.
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I guess it makes me a bad person, but posts like this make me wish that Repugs would use similar criteria for hiring an electrician to work on their house.
Then, after the inevitable massive electrical fire, perhaps the survivors will be educable. But if not, then there will be more opportunities when said Repug tries to rebuild.