Still a Year to Go
Wed., November 7, 10:02 AM
Yesterday's cryptogram was a quote from Richard Armour: “Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.”
Yesterday Connecticut held local elections, and they're done. But the campaign for president will go on for another whole year. I am tired of it already. All we are learning is how these candidates act during a campaign. When do we find out how well (or badly) they perform their jobs?
These people are competing for an executive job. How much managerial experience did they have? Did they do it well; did they appoint capable assistants? I don't know.
Some of them have wonderful ideas to help our citizens but, as I pointed out in Choosing a President, not only is there no guarantee that they can implement those ideas, they may not be able to convince their own party members to agree to them. Being intelligent and innovative is not generally the best attribute for a president. In fact, it may be the kiss of death.
I repeated a lot of the same material when I wrote about women running for president. I think Hillary Clinton is an able woman, but I am not so sure she would make a good president. Quite frankly, I believe that, if she really wants to put her ideas into action, she should be doing it from the Senate; if any one candidate understands the difficulties of managing from the White House, she should be that one. On the other hand, before there is ever a woman president, some woman is going to have to run a serious campaign and lose.
Still, it seems an awful waste of resources to me. Once again I am getting to the point where I think I will not follow the news. The first presidential campaign I remember was Truman-Dewey — 1948. The first time I could vote for president was Johnson-Goldwater — 1964. It's like a soap opera; you can stop watching for months and come back to the same story. You will not have missed a thing.
I am much more excited about the International Space Station. Weren't our repairmen grand?!
