Who Wants to be the President?

In a previous generation, everybody was raised thinking they wanted to be the President, or should want to, but now we think that anybody who wants to be the president must be crazy, or motivated in ways most people cannot fathom. Most just opt for the easier path of becoming the next American Idol, even if they have no idea what they’ll do for the talent portion of the contest. They think it is just enough to be famous, to be qualified for anything. Once they are “famous,” then they’ll work on developing some qualifications that justify their fame and fortune -- but not before! Fame and fortune is their entitlement, and then once they are delivered, maybe one will justify it -- or not! People who are rich and famous, no longer have to do anything -- in their perfect world.

So even better than running for president or any public office, is reporting on those running for public office, and telling the president how they should be a leader -- if they were as smart as they are. These are the media “personalities” whose opinions are to be valued -- as the self-proclaimed world’s smartest person in every community and forum.

Most of them have an audience of all the people who think they’d make a better media personality by doing a better imitation of the first, who is hardly original. He just wishes he was somebody else -- or a better facsimile of the original. Not surprisingly, the audience for those pretending to be better than somebody else is rapidly shrinking into a small pool of those with nothing better to do with their time -- when really, we could stand to have a lot more people volunteering to run for these public offices, regardless of whether they can win it or not.

The fact that they represent another perspective is enough to make the elective process credible. The lack of credible candidates is the lack of confidence in the entire process. When more than half the electorate no longer bothers to participate, than such a system is no longer representative of the citizenry and an indication of the will of the people. For the rest, the elected is a symbol rather than a de facto leader of the people -- but worthy of respect nevertheless.

That regard is the baseline respect expressed toward any citizen, so it was quite disturbing to see the first citizen of this nation treated with such disrespect and abuse that characterized an even lesser regard for everyone else. People who had never displayed any brilliance themselves, thought it quite within their rights, to proclaim the inferiority of intelligence by one who had distinguished himself quite convincingly all his life -- and eliminated the unchecked terroristic threats that had produced such a cloud of uncertainty and anxiety everywhere in the world.

For such an individual to be castigated by every person who thought they were unquestionably better than everybody else, is a shameless era of inflated credentials and grandeurs of delusion brought about by unjustified fame (media). I know of none who would have made a better President -- or even a better person than all the rest -- whose idea of what they thought intelligent people did, was to go around calling everybody else “stupid, idiotic, and a moron.” That is what truly stupid people, think smart people do. And that hardly qualifies them to be President -- or even a columnist/editor at the local newspaper.

But it is a free country and free society, and nobody is going to say that one can’t believe whatever they want to believe about themselves however much they belie and betray those beliefs. They just look awfully stupid publishing them as the best they are capable of producing to justify whatever claims they have of any kind of superiority they imagine themselves to possess.

That is the disability of fame -- with no good reason for being so. Meanwhile, they have underappreciated, undervalued and underestimated one of the truly great leaders of any time and place -- in President George W. Bush. And that is a milestone in the demise of mass media to maintain their credibility and relevance -- in their desperate coup to elevate themselves to this position of prominence and authoritarianism. It doesn’t work that way -- no matter how hard they try to fake it.