Uncle Grumpy

Rick Perry is a horse’s ass.

There can hardly be any question about that after Mr. Perry opened his presidential campaign by calling the Chairman of the Federal Reserve a traitor, and suggesting by innuendo that President Obama doesn’t love his country. Previously, Mr. Perry has suggested that Texas might be better off seceding from the Union, and refused to accept $300 million in Federal education funding when he learned that this money had to be spent in addition to the state’s regular funding. He had intended to use the money to allow the citizens of Texas to pay less than their already miniscule contribution to public education. Improvements to education in Texas be damned.

But the fact that Mr. Perry is a horse’s ass, or that Michele Bachmann is a one trick pony, or Ron Paul is, well, Ron Paul isn’t really what concerns me. I’ve been around for many, many presidential elections and I know that charlatans, buffoons, ideologs, and even a few crooks show up from time to time. That’s all part of the Great American Political Circus. What concerns me is that Mr. Perry is considered by a significant number of voters to be not just qualified to be President of the United States, but the best qualified of the lot.

I know we live in a country that takes pride in telling every school child he can grow up to be president, but come on folks, that’s just a marketing slogan. This is real life, and Rick Perry is damned scary.

I keep asking myself if the more or less direct election of the president is a good thing, and I can never seem to find a reason to answer in the affirmative. The Founding Fathers didn’t think so. (I wonder if all those “original intention” constitutional fundamentalists realize this.) The Constitution set up the electoral college explicitly because the Founding Fathers felt it would be difficult for ordinary citizens to have the time to invest in sorting out the candidates. The original idea of the electoral college was that folks would elect someone local whom they knew and trusted and send him off to Washington where he would meet with other electors from all over the country and after due deliberation choose the best man for the job.

Not really a bad solution to the problem of democratically choosing someone for national office. Too bad it was abandoned 200 years ago in favor of fervent partisanship.

So now the presidential election has become a contest to determine who has the best advertising firm. In it’s most recent issue, The Economist estimates that the $1 billion that Barack Obama is expected to raise for his re-election campaign would pay all the costs of 20 national elections in the UK. The money spent here would be money well spent if it did anything to make the voters better informed about the candidates’ actual qualifications for the office.

Now I’m not saying people don’t spend time talking about the candidates or reading the news or watching political ads on TV. I’m saying they spend precious little time thinking about what it really takes to be the President, and, honestly, it’s difficult to blame them, because nobody–the press, commentators, least of all the candidates themselves–does anything to provide a comprehensive, side-by-side comparison of the candidates’ positions on the issues that matter to the voters, let alone their basic ability to accomplish a tenth of what they promise. The candidates talk about whatever they think makes them look best and tell you what they think you want to hear. The talking heads of the media, bless their hearts, don’t dare press a candidate on his or her prevarications for fear of being kicked of the campaign bus and being unable to earn a living bringing us good information.

In my professional career I had occasion to hire a fair number of programmers, testers, technical writers, and even a few managers. In today’s dollars these people made between $40K and $140K and none of them, either through incompetence or malice, could have done much more than $100,000 in damage. But I spent ten times more effort in evaluating these people than the ordinary voter spends evaluating the person who will define the direction of our public policy and represent us to the world. And don’t forget this will also be the person who will have his or her finger on the nuclear war Start button. Oh, had you forgotten? Those missiles are all still in their silos, ready to go on 10 minutes notice. I’m telling you. Mr. Perry is damned scary.

So imagine if you will that, on behalf of voters across the country, I’m interviewing the candidates applying for the job of president. Some of the things I might ask about are:

• Do you have a solid understanding of macro economic concepts; the US and world financial systems; and the relative strengths and weaknesses of fiscal policy vs monetary policy. Just the ability to explain the difference between fiscal policy and monetary policy would be a plus. Would you like to take that one, Mr. Perry? Not right now? OK, how about you Mrs. Bachmann? No? And Mr. Paul, I’m really not interested in going back on the gold standard, so lets move on.
• How about your understanding of the differing concerns and interests of all of the various ethnic, socio-economic, geographic, and religious groups that make up the country. The President, after all, ought to be concerned with the fair representation for all interests, not just the concerns of those who were duped into voting for him or her. Yes, I am serious, Mr. Perry.
• Do you think you’ll be able to develop constructive relationships and negotiate difficult issues with the leaders of the major countries of the world, most of whom, by the way, are NOT horse’s asses, and many of whom have economic interests that are directly opposed to ours. Mr. Perry, are there any Democrats in Texas you could name as references on this one? And Mrs. Bachmann, how about some of your Muslim acquaintances? Yes, I understand, Mr. Paul, you really don’t get along all that well with anybody, so this isn’t really a fair question for you.
• Will you be able to work constructively with the leaders of both houses of Congress regardless of their political parties? Yes, I know some of them are Socialists and non-believers, but you need to play the hand you get. Good for you, Mr. Paul, you say you don’t dislike those people any more or less than you dislike anyone else.
• Do you think you’ll be able to present a positive and constructive view of America to the world, which requires some minimal understanding of what the concerns and interests of all those foreigners is. Can anybody here find Africa on a map for me? How about China? India? Afghanistan?? We’re fighting a war there you know. I suppose there’s not much point in asking about Tibet or Somalia, is there?

Some of the things that I probably wouldn’t get to in my interviews are:

• Is this someone I would like to have a beer with (for the working class voters) or play a round of golf with (for the professional class voters). (And by the way, this is not because I no longer drink beer or play golf.)
• Is a he or she snappy dresser. Looking presentable when you meet the Queen of England is probably a good thing, but you can hire somebody to help with that.
• Does he or she once live in my state, or does live in New York, California, or Oregon, known hangouts of elitist weirdos, or is fum Alabama, Mississippi, or Tennessee, known hangouts of redneck weirdos.
• Looks like he or she just disembarked from the Mayflower.
• And, although it makes good fodder for the tabloids, I personally have no interest in where a candidate’s father came from or how his mother worked her way through college.
• I also have not the slightest concern about whether or not a candidate wears an American flag pin on his or her pajamas. Well, OK, I guess I would have some concern about a candidate if he did wear a flag pin on his pajamas. Ow! Ow! Ow! Ouch! Ow! Will you take that God damned thing off, already?!!

Now, it’s unlikely that any of the candidates are going to respond positively to a request to sit with me for a job interview that’s on the record, is no holds barred, and focuses on the real issues, so I’m left with two choices: make up the interviews and publish the results or develop real interview questions that cover all the serious national issues and then try via letters and email to get the candidates to answer them, and/or read what they say in speeches, interviews, and on the Internet, and from that divine as well as I can what their positions actually are, and publish them in a public web site.

As much fun as I know I would have making up the interviews, the only good that accomplishes is helping to release the frustration found in trying to deal with a broken political system, so I’m going with the second option, but I’m going to need some help in identifying the right topics and coming up with questions that require a candidate to be specific without asking for a level of detail that a candidate really can’t be expected to have during the campaign.

The candidates include all of the Republican contenders still in the hunt plus Mrs Palin who may or may not join the fun. (That girl is just soooo flirty.) The candidates also include Mr. Obama and any rogue Democrat who wants to get into it. Plus the Libertarian and Green Party candidates, and the Tea Party presidential candidate who almost certainly appear if Mitt Romney wins the Republican race.

In a day or two I’ll publish a list of general topics and a start on questions on a relatively easy topic, say, public education. Stay tuned to this station for further developments.