A Normal President?

[TahoeHorn]

Do we want a President who is "normal"?

Weekly Standard

This is an interesting article. It's partly about Thompson but really more about the idea of what kind of ambition a President should have. The answer is, I think, unclear.

 

[dognduckhorn]

It would help to have a President who is "normal" but it is the nature of the beast that we get the personalities that we have. Add into the mix of instant 24-7 news coverage, and the split between what it takes to campaign and what it takes to govern becomes very real.

Recently I read an article about Bush's last State of the Union speech, and there was a peculiar phrasing that struck me (I think it was a New York Times column) www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/opinion/28weisberg.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

In particular, this caught my eye:

"So often with Mr. Bush, compassionate government began and ended with the heartfelt public avowal. He was too distracted by war and foreign policy, and too bored by the processes of government to know if the people working for him were following through on his proposals. "

The article overall spoke well of the initiatives that Bush spoke of in each of his State of the Union speeches, but noted a lack of follow thru. And it identified, for me at least, what it is about Bush that will forever mark him as being something less than what he was, or the promise of what he could have been. I don't think that Bush is stupid, or malevolent, or lacked in ambition to get elected, I just don't think he was very interested in governing once he got the job. It is easy to dismiss him as somehow stupid (if you are inclined to disagree with him), but I think the real fault was that he was disinterested in the details of the job. And this is a position where you have to be interested in the details, if not the overall scope of what you want to accomplish, and, more telling, what you have to do and how you will get there.

Maybe the primary process is a long initiation rite to get there, but to tie back to the original point, maybe you have to be smart AND ambitious enough that the "fire in the belly" comes through.