Presidential candidate qualifications
3/12/2008
Presidential Candidates?
It seems to me that the world is still a dangerous place and getting worse every month, at least I haven't read anything sensible lately that seriously disagrees with that observation.
Assuming that this opinion, at least for argument's sake, is somewhat valid then it baffles me that there is so much discussion already about presidential candidate personalities without the benefit of some kind of plausible analysis of the world arena in which they and we will operate.
Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of agitation against the fact that we have been in the Middle East for almost 5½ years without a clear story book victory over the bad guys.
The only explanation for the fact that may be half the country would vote for withdrawal must be that President Bush has been unable to make clear to the public how high the stakes really are and not only in the Middle East.
It seems to me that as a country we are suffering from what could be a fatal dose of multiculturalism or something like it, because to our liberal brethren in particular, it seems anathema to defend ourselves against what is clearly a fanatic and well organized attack against western civilization.
For those who do not believe that this is so, I would refer them to any number of sage analyses published during he past 5 years that persuasively spell out what should be obvious to anyone who values our western culture, warts and all, over any other one.
(Try the following: "Knowing the enemy" by Mary Habeck, "The Foreigner's Gift" by Fouad Ajami, "Between war and peace" by Victor D. Hanson, "America alone" by Mark Steyn, "Islam unveiled" by Robert Spencer, to name a few).
There are millions of people in the world who cannot just leave us alone even if we do not invade them but who decided, for their particular reasons, to declare us their enemy. Under their own religious code of conduct and belief this decision gives them an untrammeled license to murder any Western citizen, particularly Americans, as well as all those who are considered in our camp, so to speak.
We have seen too many examples of the seriousness of their intent during the past 30 plus years and even more so during the past 6 for anyone to question that these people mean murderous business. This is a war of a totally different kind than the conventional conflicts of the past. Civilian populations are combatants in the eyes of our self professed enemies and we better take them seriously or, before long, you will not be around to march in parades calling the President names.
Therefore, unless a "presidential candidate" begins his quest by setting out a comprehensive and persuasive vision of how he sees the world today, there is no way the electorate can make an intelligent decision about the candidate's necessary qualifications.
After all, running for president is fundamentally no different than trying to find a promising and responsible job in any large organization. The difference is that the people interviewing the candidates for a job, whether in business, education or elsewhere, know precisely what the environment is like in which the job candidates would work to help solve some known problems or expand some promising opportunities.
But electing a political president of the USA is done without most people having a clue as to what a candidate needs to bring to the job because we, as the electorate, only have our own view of what the world is like and what the primary threats and options really are. Because a president must work in the real world, not some idealized or fictitious world, the electorate deserves and needs to know how the individual really looks at the global issues. Our national, and our cultural existence may well be at stake here.
Consequently, I would recommend that we all put our minds to work about how we can come up with a convincing analysis of today's very complicated world that would help us decide which candidate might be most appropriate for the job.
In my humble opinion, domestic politics, at this stage, should take a back seat to dealing with the murderous threat coming our way from the fanatic Middle East. It is time to put some backbone into our political and media world and make them realize this is no time for cheap politics, nor for power hungry personalities who have neither the stomach nor the capabilities for leading the Western world to a successful defense of our precious national inheritance, for the preservation of which millions have given their lives in the past. Unfortunately and historically it is again a time for testing our national resolve in order to defeat those who hate us for their own reasons and want to eradicate us and our democratic way of life.
Glib pronouncements by a number of current Senators and Congressmen that we must stop all this Middle East warfare and get out now, only proves that they are totally unaware of what the Western World is really faced with today. Only their willful ignorance and lack of seriousness is saving them from being labeled cowards and incompetents, if not traitors.
The terrorists are very astute in their ability to read the US political scene and from their point of view they have us half on the run already even though they may be seriously hurting themselves.
It makes sense for them to throw every last body into this fight to kill as many innocent civilians together with all military personnel they can right now, because it is a matter of faith on their part that the West is more likely to crack than they will. Hence, while we have a preponderance of organized military power at our disposal, we seem to lack the broad support here at home which would make a winning outcome for us more probable.
While it certainly can be argued that serious mistakes were made in the post combat phase of the Iraq campaign, a fully supportive media and Congress would have approved any promising action the President would have proposed. Instead, the Congress and large parts of the electorate decided to play for short term electoral gain, aided masterfully by gross Republican incompetence and weak leadership.
This is a shameful situation and of our own making.
The consequences of not getting control of the Middle East issue will have very painful and long-term consequences for the USA and the West in general, in my opinion.
So what kind of individual seems most promising to get us out of this box?
Surely a TV and Media personality contest is not going to do it. We have been lucky with the President we have because his instincts are correct. He knows WHAT needs to be done but the Executive and Legislative parts of our government have failed him badly.
Because I have lived through a lot of history including WW II, I have a distinct "déja vu" feeling about our current predicament. When it finally dawns on us that the enemy really means business, 9/11 being considered unconvincing to many, we will go all out and fight but we will be incurring much greater costs and casualties than would have been required if we had just nipped the evil in the bud while we could. We are putting that possibility virtually out of reach now because the existing, primarily liberal, anti-Presidential animosity and its disloyal and unprincipled treatment of our current Administration's war efforts, make success in Iraq and Afghanistan pretty tenuous right now.
It is a time for serious soul searching but not of the handwringing kind, but of national pride in the principles which continue to make our country the envy of most of the world and which principles need defending from time to time. challenging current generations to show their mettle and willingness to do what their fathers and grandfathers did for them in the past.
To believe that "we have a right" to live our lives any way we like is not only puerile selfishness but plain stupid, because the world will continue to be a dangerous place for a long time to come. Tall trees catch a lot of wind as they say hence we will continue to be in somebody's gunsights whether we like it or not. As a consequence we must be willing and able to defend ourselves whenever and wherever the enemy strikes, including pre-emptive operations.
In sum, the enemy is at our gates and we better stop arguing amongst ourselves and get ready to take a lot of unpopular actions to salvage our civilization and it's future. Most importantly, this is not the time for a Presidential candidate's popularity contest but a time for critical assessment of the individual's character, ethics, previous experience and an ability to project persuasive actions to win this war we are in and give the world another chance at improving, rather than destroying, itself.
Presidential Candidates?
It seems to me that the world is still a dangerous place and getting worse every month, at least I haven't read anything sensible lately that seriously disagrees with that observation.
Assuming that this opinion, at least for argument's sake, is somewhat valid then it baffles me that there is so much discussion already about presidential candidate personalities without the benefit of some kind of plausible analysis of the world arena in which they and we will operate.
Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of agitation against the fact that we have been in the Middle East for almost 5½ years without a clear story book victory over the bad guys.
The only explanation for the fact that may be half the country would vote for withdrawal must be that President Bush has been unable to make clear to the public how high the stakes really are and not only in the Middle East.
It seems to me that as a country we are suffering from what could be a fatal dose of multiculturalism or something like it, because to our liberal brethren in particular, it seems anathema to defend ourselves against what is clearly a fanatic and well organized attack against western civilization.
For those who do not believe that this is so, I would refer them to any number of sage analyses published during he past 5 years that persuasively spell out what should be obvious to anyone who values our western culture, warts and all, over any other one.
(Try the following: "Knowing the enemy" by Mary Habeck, "The Foreigner's Gift" by Fouad Ajami, "Between war and peace" by Victor D. Hanson, "America alone" by Mark Steyn, "Islam unveiled" by Robert Spencer, to name a few).
There are millions of people in the world who cannot just leave us alone even if we do not invade them but who decided, for their particular reasons, to declare us their enemy. Under their own religious code of conduct and belief this decision gives them an untrammeled license to murder any Western citizen, particularly Americans, as well as all those who are considered in our camp, so to speak.
We have seen too many examples of the seriousness of their intent during the past 30 plus years and even more so during the past 6 for anyone to question that these people mean murderous business. This is a war of a totally different kind than the conventional conflicts of the past. Civilian populations are combatants in the eyes of our self professed enemies and we better take them seriously or, before long, you will not be around to march in parades calling the President names.
Therefore, unless a "presidential candidate" begins his quest by setting out a comprehensive and persuasive vision of how he sees the world today, there is no way the electorate can make an intelligent decision about the candidate's necessary qualifications.
After all, running for president is fundamentally no different than trying to find a promising and responsible job in any large organization. The difference is that the people interviewing the candidates for a job, whether in business, education or elsewhere, know precisely what the environment is like in which the job candidates would work to help solve some known problems or expand some promising opportunities.
But electing a political president of the USA is done without most people having a clue as to what a candidate needs to bring to the job because we, as the electorate, only have our own view of what the world is like and what the primary threats and options really are. Because a president must work in the real world, not some idealized or fictitious world, the electorate deserves and needs to know how the individual really looks at the global issues. Our national, and our cultural existence may well be at stake here.
Consequently, I would recommend that we all put our minds to work about how we can come up with a convincing analysis of today's very complicated world that would help us decide which candidate might be most appropriate for the job.
In my humble opinion, domestic politics, at this stage, should take a back seat to dealing with the murderous threat coming our way from the fanatic Middle East. It is time to put some backbone into our political and media world and make them realize this is no time for cheap politics, nor for power hungry personalities who have neither the stomach nor the capabilities for leading the Western world to a successful defense of our precious national inheritance, for the preservation of which millions have given their lives in the past. Unfortunately and historically it is again a time for testing our national resolve in order to defeat those who hate us for their own reasons and want to eradicate us and our democratic way of life.
Glib pronouncements by a number of current Senators and Congressmen that we must stop all this Middle East warfare and get out now, only proves that they are totally unaware of what the Western World is really faced with today. Only their willful ignorance and lack of seriousness is saving them from being labeled cowards and incompetents, if not traitors.
The terrorists are very astute in their ability to read the US political scene and from their point of view they have us half on the run already even though they may be seriously hurting themselves.
It makes sense for them to throw every last body into this fight to kill as many innocent civilians together with all military personnel they can right now, because it is a matter of faith on their part that the West is more likely to crack than they will. Hence, while we have a preponderance of organized military power at our disposal, we seem to lack the broad support here at home which would make a winning outcome for us more probable.
While it certainly can be argued that serious mistakes were made in the post combat phase of the Iraq campaign, a fully supportive media and Congress would have approved any promising action the President would have proposed. Instead, the Congress and large parts of the electorate decided to play for short term electoral gain, aided masterfully by gross Republican incompetence and weak leadership.
This is a shameful situation and of our own making.
The consequences of not getting control of the Middle East issue will have very painful and long-term consequences for the USA and the West in general, in my opinion.
So what kind of individual seems most promising to get us out of this box?
Surely a TV and Media personality contest is not going to do it. We have been lucky with the President we have because his instincts are correct. He knows WHAT needs to be done but the Executive and Legislative parts of our government have failed him badly.
Because I have lived through a lot of history including WW II, I have a distinct "déja vu" feeling about our current predicament. When it finally dawns on us that the enemy really means business, 9/11 being considered unconvincing to many, we will go all out and fight but we will be incurring much greater costs and casualties than would have been required if we had just nipped the evil in the bud while we could. We are putting that possibility virtually out of reach now because the existing, primarily liberal, anti-Presidential animosity and its disloyal and unprincipled treatment of our current Administration's war efforts, make success in Iraq and Afghanistan pretty tenuous right now.
It is a time for serious soul searching but not of the handwringing kind, but of national pride in the principles which continue to make our country the envy of most of the world and which principles need defending from time to time. challenging current generations to show their mettle and willingness to do what their fathers and grandfathers did for them in the past.
To believe that "we have a right" to live our lives any way we like is not only puerile selfishness but plain stupid, because the world will continue to be a dangerous place for a long time to come. Tall trees catch a lot of wind as they say hence we will continue to be in somebody's gunsights whether we like it or not. As a consequence we must be willing and able to defend ourselves whenever and wherever the enemy strikes, including pre-emptive operations.
In sum, the enemy is at our gates and we better stop arguing amongst ourselves and get ready to take a lot of unpopular actions to salvage our civilization and it's future. Most importantly, this is not the time for a Presidential candidate's popularity contest but a time for critical assessment of the individual's character, ethics, previous experience and an ability to project persuasive actions to win this war we are in and give the world another chance at improving, rather than destroying, itself.
posted by Schaesberg at 2:40 PM
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