In recent years, the idea has developed that anyone can be a politician, even if no experience in government.
Therefore, we have had a businessman, Herman Cain, who operated a pizza corporation, and ran as a candidate for President in 2012.
We have been told that government should be run as if is a corporation, but government is NOT the same as business.
Now we have a brilliant neurosurgeon, Dr. Benjamin Carson, who is renowned for saving many children’s l lives, who is considering running for President in 2016, just as Herman Cain did in 2012.
Both, and others like them, are to be commended for their successes in their chosen fields, but neither, and often others, such as Donald Trump, who has flirted many times with running for President, are unwilling to work their way up through the state legislatures, state executive branch, the House of Represenatatives, or the US Senate, or working in a Presidential cabinet or major role in the military before running for President..
No matter how competent they are in their fields of business, medicine, or any other occupation, that does not mean that they should be seen as ready to jump into the fray, and believe, without ANY political and governmental experience, that they are qualified, or have any clue as to what runnning a government is all about.
It trivializes politics and government, as it would be if someone knowing nothing about history or math or science or whatever, goes in and teaches a class to college students, or someone who has never studied and practiced law or medicine or accounting or whatever, suddenly claims they are qualified to be engage in those professions!
This has nothing to do with whether it is Republicans or Democrats, or men or women, or people of different ethniciities or racial backgrounds!
The point is that many critics of Barack Obama claim he had too little experience in government, when he actually had TWELVE years in public office.
Many other Presidents have had less experience than Obama, including Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. But all of them had some government experience. And Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ullyses S. Grant had years of military experience, which also qualifies as knowledge to operate a government. And even Mitt Romney ran the state government of Massachusetts before running for President!
The narcissist obama pales before even the first two men mentioned, a community organizer and third rate senator what a joke played on our country.
Maybe it should be run like a business. Non-business physical policies have brought us to the brink. There is no doubt now the proverbial debt train will plunge over the cliff – it’s simply a question of when.
Being a fellow baseball fan, I think this example will resonate with you. Look at the Yankees of years past. Hated by many – but successful. They ran their organization (and still do) following a sound business model that looks at return on investment (World Series, playoff appearances, etc.). Easily the most successful sports franchise in history…..all following a business platform.
This country should be run the same way. We need this type of leadership and oversight from the men and women we vote into office. Failure to ensure the economic stability of this country is not only paramount – it should be considered criminal not to. As we continue to send our storm-troopers around the globe following our crazed imperialistic passions – we are spending money we don’t have and printing new money (criminal Federal Reserve) devaluing the dollar and perpetuating the endless debt cycle that the private Federal Reserve monopoly has saddled us with since 1913.
The horrors of hyperinflation are well documented. Look at the Weimar Republic in Germany’s history books. We don’t want that here. But it will come if you continue to lie to ourselves that sound business practices should not be instituted and/or expected from our politicians!
I’m not going to debate Obama’s experience to be president – I think you showed that many have come from less (or more). My issue with Obama is that he has done EVERYTHING directly the opposite of what was promised. He escalated the wars in the Mid-East, we continue to torture and murder large numbers of American’s, and he has followed the policies of those in the past of continuing to erode our civil liberties. For those reasons, he sucks.
I welcome your response.
I agree some experience in government is helpful. But at the same time we should have term limits in Congress.
And The most unpopular president in recent political history, the imbecile George Bush left a record of big-government spending and intractable wars that remains, a destroyed economy…difficult even for even you and Juan to defend … And this total loser remains convinced history will vindicate him.
The following article lists just the 40 top failures of Bush and his administration.
http://tpzoo.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/40-top-failures-of-the-bush-administration/
Dave did you rant about GW’s narcissism, stupidity, and total incompetence to govern?
Ok Juan, it’s time for your long winded, obtuse peroration!
We ‘re all waiting for the great one to elucidate how wrong I am and insult the professor as you consistently do like the petulant adolescent you mimic!
Come on…. Geeez don’t keep us waiting. I don’t think we can stand the suspense!
Mr. T, I have never contended that Obama is perfection personified. He should have removed us from Iraq and Afghanistan sooner; I have issues with his use of drones; and on civil liberties, there have been actions I do not like.
But he has had no cooperation from the opposition party, and turning any policy around is not easy when one does not control all branches of government. It leads to stalemate and gridlock. Economically, he is far from leftist, as now shown with his move to cut Medicare and Social Security, which I think is wrong. There is no justification for corporate welfare, as the GOP wants.
With his faults and shortcomings, I still believe he will rank well in history, as compared to Bush and Reagan, with Reagan placed in a myth that conservatives have accepted as fact!
Thanks for contributing.
Why Maggie, I actually agree with you. Yes George Bush was a big government establishment Republican who ran an annual average deficit of $250.7 billion, ranging from a high of $458.6 billion in 2008 to a low of a $128.2 billion surplus in 2001. As a conservative/classic liberal I was appalled by such deficits and never agreed with them. I also agree with you that it hurt the economy, because spending more than your revenues is bad policy. So you can imagine that we conservative/classic liberals are more appalled by Obama’s annual average deficit of $1.3 trillion. If Bush’s big government spending and deficits destroyed the economy according to you , then I can’t imagine what Obama’s deficit spending is doing!
There is nothing to be gained by compromising with someone who is an enemy to the American constitution.
Dave, you really think you understand the American Constitution, and what the Founding Fathers believed? There is so much bull that goes around, promoted by conservatives, who CLAIM they understand the Constitution, when it is clear that those statesmen of 1787 would be appalled by those who claim to understand the Constitution and its true meaning, but do not have the slightest clue to what it is all about!
And, Dave, have you ever heard of the statement: “Politics is the art of compromise”! Nothing gets done without compromise by both sides, and the Founding Fathers understood that when they wrote the Constitution in 1787!
@Ron: As Reagan said, “When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn’t like it.
“Compromise” was a dirty word to them and they wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don’t get it all, some said, don’t take anything.
“I’d learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.’
“If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that’s what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.”
I and the majority of conservatives/classic liberals agree! We wish we were getting 75% to 80% of what we want. But the problem is that the Republicans establishment the idea of compromise is getting 1%, if lucky. In other words the idea of compromise that the Republican establishment has and that the Democrats, media and the left want is, Capitulation of our principles and ideals. So I would end with three other quotes from Reagan.
– “A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.â€
– “I don’t know about you, but I’m impatient with those Republicans who, after the last election, rushed into print saying we must broaden the base of our party, when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents.â€
– “Don’t give up your ideals, don’t compromise, don’t turn to expediency — and don’t, for heaven’s sake, having seen the inner workings of the watch — don’t get cynical.â€