What Do You Want?

[tcepsa]

It seems like every election--especially recent ones--many if not most people feel they are being offered two bad options and their criteria for picking who they vote for are centered around which one of them they feel would be less awful as President.

This has aroused my curiosity.

What characteristics do you want the President to have? What skills do you think are necessary to do a good job in the White House? What experience do you think is necessary to qualify a person to lead this nation? What issues must the President be focused on, and what must their stance be on each? What are things that they must not have/say/do/believe?

Is it even possible for such a person to exist, or are we going to be stuck with making the best of bad choices from here on out? Has it ever been anything but that? Can it ever be anything but that?

[Edit: Fixed grammar, added "not" question]

Comments

[arashinomoui.livejournal.com]

Here I'll take a different stand. It used to be that I was of a more libertarian bent. However, you know what, I've determined that under most libertarian-esque systems too many people would get screwed. Congratulations Mr. Bush, you've pushed me from being a socially liberal, financially conservative person to a full fledged flaming progressive who wants socially liberal schemes along with financially responsible payment abilities.

I'd want someone who would actually lead the mob rather than follow, i.e., "Here I am my people, come to me" versus "There are my people, I must go to them." I want someone who is going to be able to stand up to unenlightened self-interest and institute the painful changes. Too much has happened for me to believe that what I would love to have happen to actually happen, but there's a lot of places that can change. (If you want an example, removal of the decision that makes corporations a person. GOD WHAT A STUPID USSC decision!)

But to quote from Bruce Baugh's post, but as long as "When it's the final election, you can either help the worst candidate win or the next-worst one, pretty much. That's how first-past-the-post balloting works, and it will continue to work that way until people promote alternative systems for actual use at lower levels - get folks used to proportional representation, ranked preferences, and the like for their towns, counties, and states, and then it'll be ripe for change nationally. Voting for someone who cannot win does not change the system, it only increases the chances that the worst candidate will win."

Okay rant from libertarian turned progressive over.

[kiss-kass.livejournal.com]

The government should not change society. Government should adapt to a changing society. Less than 1,000 people have neither the right nor the Constitutional authority to set social policy. If you want that small number of people to determine how millions should think and live their lives, make a good argument for that position, convince 2/3 the country and amend the Constitution. Until then, the government can but the hell out of my bedroom.

Without the vocal extreme minority of right-wing lunatic Christians in office, this country would have been well on the road to accepting and legalizing gay marriage because the vast majority of the country just doesn't care what others do in their own homes.

The problem with your scenario is that it only works for you if people who think like you win. What happens when the person who fits your general description of someone who leads the mob and imposes his social viewpoint on the country is exactly the opposite philosophical bent as you? Then where are we? We're in exactly the spot we are in now. We had one of those in Bill Clinton and look how the people just like him on the other end of the political spectrum reacted. They waged a political war and landed Dubya in office. Now we have the anti-Clinton version of what you want and the country is not sitting pretty.

Bill Clinton was no more respectful of viewpoints that clashed with his than Dubya. In fact, according to a VP in my office who came into contact with President Clinton on almost a daily basis, Clinton was positively hateful and vindictive to anyone who voiced disagreement with him and his wife was worse.

That kind of intolerance in the guise of liberalism or progressiveness is as unacceptable as the intolerance the extreme right displays. It is okay to disagree with someone and that doesn't make them wrong. The belief that it does is a fundamental cause of our current situation. I find it sadly ironic that people who argue for tolerance of their beliefs are so intolerant of others' beliefs.

Your leader only works if everyone in the country thinks just like you. As good as your beliefs are, that is a very frightening scenario... A nation without any individual thinkers.

[arashinomoui.livejournal.com]

I'd love to believe that people are fundamentally good, that if given the freedom to choose they will choose the right thing. Instead, I've seen that absence of regulation people will choose the short-term, selfish, most for me & screw you option.

Communism works, in theory. Libertarianism works, in theory. Both fail because the mass of humanity is greedy, short-sighted, and stupid/ignorant and as studies (who's unbiased nature one may question) have shown, the general populace has proven itself to prefer to remain low information.

So ideally, I agree with you. That being said with the world as it is? If it's a choice between my way or his way, I want my way.