Well duh. I'd say most folks of even average intelligence sorted this out in 1999. But that's not who we're concerned about, right? We're concerned about those people who worry, sometimes legitimately, that someone who is too sharp, too prone to reflection, might be a bad leader. I know several people who chose Bush in the past election for that reason, because Bush was more clearly a man of action while Kerry was a peripatetic milquetoast, and with that reductive fallacy firmly in place it's not an unreasonable position.
If you read the rest of the newspaper in which Robinson's column is published, you might notice that our president, the self-styled man of action, is currently splitting his time between 11th-hour attempts to pass a clumsy facsimile of his number one legislative priority from seven years ago and unsuccessfully trying to fend off the consequences of his rash actions from four years ago, with only his disturbing penchant for secrecy and the crass chutzpah of his cabinet to defend himself. THERE IS A LESSON TO BE LEARNED HERE, FOR ANYONE WITHOUT SUFFICIENT FORESIGHT TO HAVE SEEN THIS PATHETIC SET OF EVENTS LUMBERING DOWN THE PIKE.
I know, I shouldn't berate anyone whose mind I hope to change, but any of my fellow citizens who care so little about this country that they would let New Haven's most famous town drunk play at being president for two whole terms can go to hell. I know full well who I need to fight to defend the American ideal, and they're not carrying Korans or wearing suicide belts, because freedom and the equality of man do not fear violence or difference of opinion. Fair, open government and the pursuit of the realization of the unapproached limits of human potential are not threatened by bullets, shrapnel, or the contradictory dogma born of ancient fairy tales. Justice and peace are not antagonistic to oppression and war, they are different and superior animals that need to shake off the latter pair, not just be presented as alternatives. But the perversion of these ideas through Orwellian doublespeak and the secret and gradual erosion of legal protections by someone in whom the nation's trust has been misplaced, that's dangerous.
The presidential contest that is currently idling its engines on the editorial pages of the country's newspapers is a rare and readily seizable opportunity for this country to awake from the binary electoral nightmare that has gripped it for at least a decade now, a chance for the populace to cast off the learned helplessness so expertly exploited by our twin tormentors and to firmly place the word "representative" back in front of "government" instead of "Red" or "Blue." We can't do that by tossing the top job into a crowd of vultures and standing back to see which one is cutthroat enough to seize it, we need to, as one nation, indivisible, pick an exceptional person from among our ranks and send him or her to Washington armed with our hopes and needs and shackled to our highest expectations. It is un-American to do any less, no matter how much the Republican and Democratic political consultants have lowered the bar.
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5 comments:
Quoth Eugene Robinson: "We need to elect the kid you hated in high school, the teacher's pet with perfect grades."
Gabriel, apparently *I* am this country's next president. Well, then there's my lack of sufficient age. I suppose I'll have to wait two terms. Is eight years long enough to destroy all the negatives?
Tangentially, have I told you lately that you should quit your job and become a writer (and an emboldened and passionate one, at that)?
To show a mirror example of your first sentence, go read Slander or Treason by Ann Coulter. Except for "public persona of ideology" that woman speaks (and writes) with every bit of the smartypants elitist tounge and advanced vocabulary that Gore does. Is she too smart to be president? Just a devil's advocate question, really.
As for the rest of your post, let me offer a slightly different perspective: We don't have any Hitler's running for office. Sure, people, the press, the political spinsters and ideologists want to equate Bush to the mass murderers in world history, but the fact is, every viable candidate for president (people who can actually be elected from the Clintons and Bushs to the Kerry's, Gore's, McCain's, Doles, Obamas, etc...) have never been the slightest bit of a dictator type. We don't have a Hugo Chavez in office. They are all cut from the same "land of the free, home of the brave" cloth and upkeep that law. "The issues" such as abortion and gun laws and taxes and self defense are just issues based on a free society with a representative gov't. Sure I want more free markets, but even the protectionisms we have in our markets, while wrong, are not of a level of legislations that warrant dictatorships and communism. So hey, it's not perfect, but it's the best system the world has. Much tweaking is still needed, I agree, but it could still be well worse. Also, you told me to go to hell in this post because I supported Bush for the last two elections. I am going to tell you to go to hell for thinking Gore or Kerry were even slightly better candidates for the office. There are better candidates, but those two were more than a spitshine away from being one.
I like your blog. :)
Let it be known, the Fiery Sword made it a full fortnight before succumbing to Godwin's Law! By way of clarification, however, the Weimar Republic didn't know they were electing a Hitler either. That's kind of the point. They thought they were electing a charismatic leader who was going to solve the many intractable problems that plagued their beleaguered nation and restore their national pride. We are uncomfortably close to that possibility. Also, asking if Ann Coulter is too smart to be elected president is like asking if Lassie is too smart to be elected president; you have to get past a few other hurdles before that's going to come up. Lastly, Gore and Kerry would have been far superior presidents than Bush for one very obvious reason: they wouldn't have lasted more than one term. Well, that and Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq. That would have been nice, wouldn't it? We might well be just as unhappy having endured a Gore presidency, but it's hard to argue that it could possibly have been more catastrophic for the US and the world at large than Bush's tenure.
Godwin's Law: How absolutely useless can a law be? Anyway, They hyper-inflation that hit Germany before Hitler was elected is exactly what allowed that "charismatic" leader to be elected. At that point, the people were looking for _anything_ to help them, and he was the most convincing. Luckily, we have a steady economy so the people can be a little more critical of their presidential candidates. And that is the point. I agree that term limits are nice (based on your point that Gore and Kerry would have only been in office for one term) but not on your choices. but those are your opinions for this blog and which make my opinions completely irrelvent. Now redirect your comments about Ann Coulter back to Al Gore, because they are nearly one in the same. Electing Al Gore is also like Electing Lassie. So there you go.
Ladies and gentlemen, a comment from the Bizarro World where shrill, lowbrow entertainers like Ann Coulter and relatively staid ex-senators who fill the ample free time afforded by retirement and obscene wealth with moderate activism are "nearly one and the same." I mean hey, they both wrote books, right? Why not include Faulkner, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Penn, and Teller and make full baseball team out of it? They'd probably still be able to beat the Yankees this year, best of seven.
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