Face a fact: no one, no matter what his or her political experience has been, no matter how much history he or she has studied (and not just studied, but learned), no matter what his or her military service consisted of, can ever really be "ready" to be president.
Why should that matter, anyway? I mean, we're talking about a job that a B-movie actor held for 8 years. A B-movie actor who never ever performed military service. A B-movie actor who spent 8 years acting like the genial grandpa, telling us all what we want to hear instead of dealing with the facts of the world. How hard can it be?
On the other hand, American history is full of examples of men (that's historical fact, not political correctness) who had impeccable credentials, but who made a total muck of their time in the Oval Office. George Bush pater is merely the most recent example.
And some of our greatest presidents, while they had legislative experience at the national level, essentially learned the job on the fly--two of the most important being JFK and Abraham Lincoln.
"Experience" is not the issue. "Experience" is a smokescreen. The issue is judgment. The issue is character. The issue is ability to think, to learn, to analyze, to make decisions, to know when idealism should be served and to know when to pull back and be pragmatic. "Coolness under fire" is the military terminology. But one does not have to have served active military duty in wartime to possess this trait in any or all of its permutations.
One has to show by how one leads one's life that he or she has the judgment and cool temper to LEAD. Barack Obama is cool under fire. Almost every decision he's made since he came to national prominence demonstrates his ability to think dispassionately about a problem and find the best possible solution to it. I don't always agree with him. I'm still peeved that he voted for Dubya's FISA bill that granted the telecoms immunity from their illegal spying on all of us. But he sent out a detailed email explaining his reasons. He had several; I don't generally agree with them, but I do now understand. He had his eyes on a bigger prize, one reached by passing the FISA bill in its final form. I can respect his reasons for his vote. I doubt that John McCain is even capable of giving such an explanation for anything he's done, given that his main campaign tactic seems to be accusing Obama of being the "flip-flopper" that McCain himself has turned out to be.
John Kerrey cogently noted this in his speech to the Democratic National Convention yesterday. The candidate McCain of the past said Dubya's tax cuts, if made permanent, were dangerous. McCain the candidate today says he embraces those tax cuts and will make them permanent, to name just one instance of many in which McCain has sold out to the far, far right of the GOP.
Yes, Obama has tweaked his positions on many issues as the need has arisen. Politics IS "the art of the possible," after all. If it's better to give in on 10% of something to get 90% of one's agenda passed, it's better to give in on that 10%. That's what real politicians do. They don't cry and scream and stamp their feet and insist on "all or nothing." They don't smear their political opponents with ridiculous lies. They don't act as though anyone who dares disagree with them is a traitor.
They work together to achieve the larger goals of accomplishing what's best for the country. They don't finagle the system to get what they want by subterfuge when they don't get their way legislatively. [The way Dubya's administration is at present trying to do by redefining "abortion" to include "birth control."--Ed.] They don't regard the government as a plum to be divided up amongst only their supporters.
Our government is supposed to be a government of laws, not of men. Our government is supposed to represent all of us, not just those who want to make campaigning permanent and keep power permanently in their own hands. Our government is supposed to function in a bi-partisan way. [Indeed, the Founding Fathers never wanted our government to be subjected to political parties at all.--Ed.] Our government is supposed to be a place of (voluntarily) limited-time service by citizens who care about all of America who will go back to their private lives after briefly performing public service.
Our government can be none of those things when it's under the control of people who say "government doesn't work." Of course it doesn't work when they control it. They don't want it to, so it won't. The system has to be above the attempts of any group, right OR left, to control and manipulate it. It has to be dispassionate, credible, and as objective as the people involved in it can be. It is a higher calling, not a heap of junk to be trashed.
I hope the cheeky nature of this post's title doesn't betray what I am saying here. I think being the president of the USA has to be the most difficult job on Earth. I also think that no matter what one has done in life, there's no way one can truly get the experience to prepare one perfectly to be president. And that's why one's character, as revealed through one's actions, matters.
How hard can it be to be president? Really hard, if one cares more about doing it and doing it well than one cares about posing and posturing and acting one's way through it.
So think: do you want to elect a man who obviously loves and respects his family and his fellow citizens, or do you want to elect a man who says whatever he thinks his immediate audience wants to hear, a man who had an affair with his present wife while still married to his first one, a man who would offer up his present wife to compete in a biker beauty contest, a man who has no trouble at all lying by accusing his political opponent of all the weaknesses of character he has demonstrated during the course of this campaign? Which one has demonstrated genuine strength of character in both his life AND his campaign? The future of the country depends on how you answer.
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