Political Commentary

I thought it would be interesting to explore the qualifications that should be evident in any realistic Presidential Candidates. I will also explore the “qualifications” that are completely meaningless. The constitutional qualifications are fixed, so I won’t go into those at the moment. These qualifications or attributes are presented in my order of importance.

Leadership - Leadership requires a direction. This means that someone must have a goal and head toward it. Obviously, some leaders lead in the wrong direction. Hitler would be an example of an excellent leader going in the wrong direction. Leadership seems to be a scarce commodity among presidential candidates these days. President Bush has shown some leadership, but often in the wrong direction too. President Clinton was a follower, not a leader. The senior President Bush was not a follower, but he wasn’t much of a leader either. Reagan was an excellent Leader. Among current candidates, I think Obama talks like a leader but has no goal. Clinton is not a leader. She is wishy washy like her husband. Do whatever it takes to get elected. Edwards - no. McCain has some leadership, but seems to be always going in the wrong direction. Romney may be a leader, but I haven’t seen it yet. Fred Thompson may be a leader. Huckabee is not a leader, he is a follower too. Duncan Hunter might be a leader, but nobody is following him, another requirement for a leader. I am not sure about most of the rest of the candidates at the moment. You decide.

Communicator - Reagan was an amazing communicator. A president or any leader must be able to communicate their goal to their followers. With communication goes motivation. Perhaps Duncan Hunter doesn’t have a following because he is not a communicator. Obama is an excellent communicator and speaker. He is a pleasure to listen to as he speaks.

Experience - This is an important qualification. Virtually all of the candidates have some of the proper experience. Clinton has the least experience, in my opinion, in spite of her claim to 35 years experience. For her, relevant experience started when she became a Senator, in my opinion, and that was not too long ago. Obama doesn’t have much experience either, but he has time in state and federal legislatures which gives him some worthwhile experience. Clearly, the other candidates have varying degrees of experience, but all have significant experience as legislators or executive officers.

Now, what are non-qualifications? These are presented in random order, because none of them have any real value.

Gender - Man or Woman? Irrelevant! Being a woman could be a slight disadvantage. Much of our population is still very prejudiced against women in leadership positions. This is strictly prejudice and has no basis in inherent ability. In foreign relations, being a woman MIGHT have disadvantages in countries where women are still considered third or fourth class citizens. This includes the Middle East and much of Asia. This could be used to the woman’s advantage though if played correctly.

Race - Another completely irrelevant issue. More so, in my opinion than gender. For example, if Obama became president, he would not face the same discrimination in Arab countries that a woman would, and would face the same bigotry as any American would in much of the rest of the world. Some parts of the world are extremely biggoted if you are not from that country. Japan and China are easy examples. So other than prejudice here in the US, there are not really any global barriers to race in the Presidency.

Religion - This is the presidency. I thought we put this one to rest with Kennedy. His religion speech was extraordinary. If you haven’t heard it you should listen to it. All the current bruhaha about Romney is ridiculous. I am more concerned about Huckabee who has demonstrated in the past that he used his religion as a guide to how to govern, which led to bad decisions, in his case, while he was governor.

In addition to those non-qualifications, there are also some disqualifiers in my opinion, also presented in random order:

Vandalism of National Monuments - When the Clintons left office the first time, the White House was trashed. Remember that? So you say “Hillary didn’t do that!” She was there. That was part of her 35 years experience wasn’t it? She didn’t seem too upset about it at the time. Do we want to let the same bunch of low life brutes back into the White House?

Poll Watchers - Hillary again. Have you ever noticed that the Clintons watch the polls and morph their campaign into whatever it takes to either negate or take advantage of the polls. Bill Clinton did the same thing when he was in office.

Pandering - I remember during the Bill Clinton campaign, Bill and Hillery were at a Jewish establishment of some sort and promised that they would have a Kosher kitchen in the White House. I am sure that when they moved in the just ran out and found the nearest Rabbi to help them with that! Hillary panders to women. Edwards panders to people who don’t like big business. Huckabee, Clinton, Edwards, McCain and other pander to illegal aliens. I haven’t seen too much other pandering yet from the others.

Lying - The consumate liar in this group seems to be Hillary. She and Bill make an art of trying to change history on an almost daily basis. Most recently they claimed that a lawsuit filed by a firm close to them was not their doing in the Nevada Casino Caucuses. Bill Clinton was stating as fact the lie that this would mean that each of the Casino employees would be getting 5 votes as opposed to one. This was simply a useful lie to him. Hillary lies about her experience. Maybe the rest of the candidates are better liars, but I haven’t seen too much of it yet in other candidates. In this context though, I consider evasions lies, and I am sure we will see a bunch as the campaign goes on.

Pettyness - By this I mean the vicious attacks and accusations that some of the candidates are prone to when they are criticized. Hillary did this when she was questioned about her support of drivers licenses for illegal aliens. I can’t remember, but I believe Romney was spraying invective around at everyone for a while during the Iowa campaign, because Huckabee and others were criticising him. Obama seems to be completely above this, and I have a great deal of respect for him in this regard.

That’s my opinion! What’s yours?