A Non-Partisan Presidential Wish List

Forget for the moment the ridiculous political ads that have begun to plague the airwaves in greater and greater numbers, the high flights of hyperbole and somber music behind a lurid announcer's voice claiming that their political opponent voted to club baby seals to death. Forget for a moment the two major political parties and their platforms, one who says we should spend loads of money and the other saying we should spend much larger loads of money. Forget the bitterness, division, and dissent for a moment. I have a question.

Put aside party, race, sex, and anything so superficially identifying. Look at the presidency of the United States and ask: what kind of man or woman do I want filling that seat?

I have my own list, and here it is. Agree or disagree as you please.

• I want my president to be a good speaker. Not just when he is in front of a teleprompter, but all the time. I want him to be able to string good words together into intelligent and articulate sentences, to be able to explain himself without flinching or saying "um." Included in this is a president who does not say stupid and embarassing things on an open mic.
• I want a president who has been a soldier. I mean that in a very specific way. A president who has been a professional fighting man (or woman) will understand not only the strength and honor of the military, but also the horror and stress and fear of combat. The one reminds him of what the military can do, the other what we as a country should avoid doing if at all possible.
• I want a president who can do math. This might sound stupid, but then again there are many remarkably stupid people in Washington. Our current president's administration cannot balance a budget. The previous one only did a little bit better. I would like someone who has balanced a budget before or at least has a mathematically sound concept of how to do so.
• I want a president who respects the lifeblood of this country. When I say lifeblood, I literally mean just that: the blood of America's children. I want a president who understands we have nothing to gain and everything to lose by allowing the killing of children in utero to continue. When the president of the most powerful country on earth does not respect the lives of his most helpless citizens, how can he respect the lives of anyone else, be they American or otherwise?
• I want a president who is there. Not on vacation all the time, not prowling around for photo ops and present only to shake hands and sign bills. I want a president who is where the action is happening. When June 6th rolls around, for example, I want him either standing on the beaches of Normandy or at some World War II memorial, not having dinner with high rollers in Vegas. If the U.S. is struck by natural disaster, I want him on the ground as soon as humanly and safely possible, giving victims his condolences. I want him to be present, not just to vote present.
• I want a president who is fit. I want someone who looks active, who radiates healthy habits and who is not afraid of the outdoors. Someone who doesn't just talk about national parks, but actually visits them and climbs their mountains and fishes in their streams.
• I want a family president. I want someone who bespeaks marital and familial love, who has children and knows how to interact with them.
• And finally, I want a president who is honest. I almost don't care if I disagree with him or not, as long as he is forthright in the explanation of his actions. I want a president who does not beat around the bush waiting for someone else to clean up his mess or explain him. I want one who does it himself.

Maybe this is all too much to ask. Everyone has flaws. But I think it might just be a good start.

Good Guys

Voting Machine

I would like to offer a reflection on the upcoming presidential election.

When I was a little kid, my parents would go out to vote in the presidential election, and when they got back I always had two questions to ask them: (1) You voted for the good guy, right? and (2) Did the good guy win or lose? Yes I was only six or seven years old at the time and my knowledge of politics was...weak at best. But interestingly enough, I think those two questions have, in a way, come to define not only the way that adults vote for candidates, but also how the candidates appeal to the voters.

We'll start with how candidates appeal to voters, as this is generally the launching point of this particular political process. The candidates go about this appeal in two ways: tell the community how great they and their accomplishments are, and/or destroy their opponent with semi-factual invective. They promise to do great things and to do them better (or drastically differently) from the opposition, utilizing the powers of the office they are running for to do so.

The flip-side is also true. Voters are pitched pervasive ideas of the goodness or evil of one candidate or the other, and begin to finalize their choice. They look at the good that one promises to do with the powers of office, or they recoil from the evil that another is said to be planning with the same office. One candidate becomes the “good guy” and the other the “bad guy.” The voter weighs the different facts and/or emotions involved with one guy or the other, and finally makes his choice for one because that one will use the office to get things done, to do good things, to go against the flow.

In essence, with a presidential election nowadays it boils down to this: utilizing the extraordinary powers accumulated by the office of the president, our candidate can do a much better, far more fantastic job of getting things done and moving things along than your guy. Our guy will be more vigilant in killing terrorists than your guy, more creative in stimulating the economy than your guy, more hard-nosed about regulating businesses than your guy, more concerned for the environment than your guy. Our guy will increase defense spending into the stratosphere to keep us safe, or our guy will increase the funding of the EPA one hundredfold to keep our kids safe. And all because our guy uses absolute power for good, and yours uses absolute power for evil.

Perhaps this is a small exaggeration, but I have heard all of these arguments enough times from enough prominent people to believe that frighteningly little of what I just laid out is hyperbole. Did you vote for the good guy, and did he win? Because if he wins, he's gonna do good stuff with his power.

The question manages to almost entirely miss the point. What we might want to look at a little more closely first is not the things our candidates promise to do once in elected office, but the powers of that office that allow them to promise such insane things in the first place.

Since when was the president of the United States authorized to hunt down, indefinitely detain or kill individual people, be they terrorist or otherwise, Americans or otherwise? President Obama just signed that one into law at the beginning of this year, with Republican help. I am sure a Republican president would have found such a law to be just as tempting to sign.

Since when was the president of the United States ever supposed to have the power to stir the economic pot any which way he chose? Within this past decade both President Bush and President Obama have tried doing just that, with stimulus packages, bailouts, takeovers, and government loans. And Mitt Romney is touting his experience as a businessman as a factor of electability, experience he promises to use as president. All of these men either have meddled or propose to meddle to greater or lesser degrees.

And since when has the president had the gall to insist that the people involved in religious institutions violate their consciences?

The list of inflated and ridiculous presidential powers continues to grow with each passing presidency, be it Republican or Democrat. So before we ask whether one guy's policies or positions will be better than the other, let's ask first if they should even have the power to put those policies and positions into practice.

As the saying goes, “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” There will never be a choice between a strictly “good guy” and a strictly “bad guy,” just between handing the reins of the same power to a better man or a worse man. Those powers should not be any more tempting to abuse than they already are.

Obama is "Sort of God," and Biden is His Prophet

Photo by David Shwen

Vice President Joe Biden has become a rather useful barometer for determining the political air pressure inside the Obama administration. When the pressure is up, something awkward is bound to emerge from the man's mouth and make headlines.

Beginning with a humorous incident  in January where the VP "prophesied" (by gaffe of course) the outcome of the Giant's game against the 49ers, Biden may rapidly be shaping up to be the administration's very own highly unwelcome prophet. (After all, prophets are said to be most unwelcome in their home towns.)

We could start with how Biden views his own accomplishments and position: in other words, as a joke. In Biden's own words: "I never had an interest in being a mayor ‘cause that’s a real job. You have to produce. That’s why I was able to be a senator for 36 years." Purportedly spoken in an attempt at humor, but it is revealing. The man does not know when to bite his tongue. So it became a source of major apparent embarassment in the past week and a half when Biden came out in full-throated support of gay marriage and forced Obama to say something on the issue definitively.

Did Obama evolve? I think possibly, but not the way he would claim. With the full-fledged push for gay rights by the Obama administration, including the mandate that Eric Holder disregard the Defense of Marriage Act (a federal law that Holder is bound constitutionally to uphold), it would seem unlikely that anything happened other than that Biden revealed Obama's hand before the president was ready. The evolution was complete a good while before Biden opened his mouth on the issue.

Every god needs his prophet, and Biden appears up for the task. In March, Biden claimed that the current GOP candidate pool could not beat Obama, but then proceeded to detail the factors that could very well sink Obama's chances in November. Then on "Meet the Press," Biden proceeded to call Mitt Romney 'President Romney' by accident. What is the VP trying to tell us here?

It may be that none of these gaffes come to fruition in the real world, but if they did Joe Biden could always come back to say "I told you so." For once I agree with radio host Rush Limbaugh, who said at this point it almost sounds like Biden is desperate to keep from being replaced as VP on the Democratic ticket. I would strongly urge Obama, the president who has been declared "sort of God," to keep his prophet around for another four years. Even if the gush of prophecy gaffes does not pan out, it will definitely be an amusing ride.

Channeling Kennedy

I never thought I would actually hear Peggy Noonan praise John F. Kennedy, but she has an intriguing insight into his presidential approach, in contrast to President Obama's approach of divisive verbal bludgeoning.