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The Next Republican Nominee: What Attributes Should We Seek?
It has become more or less conventional wisdom that former governors make better presidents than former legislators. There is some logic to that view: a governor has had to oversee the administration of government agencies, to learn the art of give-and-take with a legislative body, and to sell new policies to an electorate that may be either uninformed or opposed. All other things being equal, the argument makes sense.
But, given that we’re dealing with real life human beings, all other things are never equal. Recent history neither proves nor disproves the conventional wisdom.
Governors can be very successful: Ronald Reagan and FDR (though I hate many of his policies) were highly successful presidents, one helping steer the country through our biggest war and another overseeing a huge turn-around in the economy while playing the lead role in terminating the Soviet empire. Whatever we may think about Bill Clinton as a man (to me, he is not a decent human being), he had what most would consider a generally successful presidency (no big wars, decent economy). It’s also important to remember that the Republican Congress dragged him back to the middle.
But governors can be failures (or less than stellar): Exhibit A is Jimmy Carter. His record as governor did not translate into anything approaching success. George W. Bush’s presidency was, from my perspective, more positive than negative, but hardly a rousing success (though, in contrast to Clinton, he is one of the most decent men to hold the office).
Legislators can be successful: The most effective legislator president since FDR was Harry Truman. He was a liberal on fiscal issues, but his legislative experience did not prevent him from making good decisions, especially on national security issues. It’s difficult to render a final judgment on the Kennedy presidency, but it’s hard to make a case that he failed. Lyndon Johnson’s political career died on the rocky shore of Vietnam: but he knew how to wheel-and-deal with Congress (and his Great Society programs went through Congress with support from both parties). Gerald Ford’s presidency was not a success, but a second term would have told us a lot more about him.
Legislators can be epic failures: Barack Obama (on everything).
Those with mixed backgrounds can go either way. Eisenhower was neither a governor nor legislator; but in leading the allied war effort in Europe, he was required to develop and employ delicate political skills and a broad range of administrative expertise (see, e.g., the Normandy Invasion). I rate him as a successful president. Bush I was a congressman, but then filled a variety of positions in which he had to run or assist in running organizations. His presidency was a mixed bag: success in the Gulf War, but no great shakes on domestic issues. Nixon was a Senator and then VP for eight years. He was a skilled politician but his reputation remains sullied by the Watergate affair. From this I conclude that being a governor is positive, but hardly assures success.
Likewise, being a legislator does not mean a failed presidency. If we go back in history, we can see one leader (Abraham Lincoln) with no executive experience whatsoever before becoming a great president. He didn’t serve as governor; his government background was solely legislative (mostly in a state legislature). Yet most would rate him as a great leader, one of our two or three greatest presidents. My conclusion from all this is that the experience of a candidate is important. Some executive experience is good. A purely legislative background is not quite so good, but can be helpful if the candidate learns from the experience. Thus, I believe it’s extremely important to look at a range of attributes.
Here are some that I think are important:
- Is the candidate animated by genuine conservative principles?
- Does the candidate have the talent to make deals on significant issues, without compromising those principles beyond recognition?
- On the other hand, is the candidate an inflexible ideologue? [I think there’s a big difference between a leader who is animated by sound principles and one who is ideologically inflexible. The principled leader is willing to consider a range of options within the parameters of his principles; the ideologue tends to see one, and only one, solution to all problems—and the idea of compromise is alien to him. Obama is the classic example of ideologue as president].
- Can the candidate convince 51 percent the country that he or she should lead the nation?
- Once elected, can the candidate convince the public to support policies based on his principles?
- Does the candidate accept the idea that the presidency is not an imperial office?
- Does the candidate love America, its Constitution, and its people?
I’m interested in what others believe should be on the list of attributes for our next candidate. Thoughts?
Published in General
Courage to act against ISIS.
Beyond foreign policy disasters everywhere, we need a person who will aggressively undo as many act, decrees, appointments, and czars this president has been part of. The man, his legacy, and his syncophants must be deconstructed.
Bold. Ethical. Tough. Competent. Honest. An ability to be humbled and learn.
I contemplated a similar post today. I looked into Art. 2 with an eye to building a hiring announcement for the position described. I’m not clever enough to accomplish such a thing, but this gets to the substance of it. What does the job entail, and what do we desire in the person we hire for the job?
My first consideration is one who understands the job description and has no intention of going beyond it. So, basically, a constitutional, limited government type.
Add “ethical” and I think you’ve covered the basics, which is all we can expect.
The absolutely ideal candidate would be one who’s both served as a major-state governor and on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, and who just happens to be principled, charismatic, and right about absolutely everything. Since that’s never an option, we’re balancing different strengths and weaknesses.
Actually, my discomfort with the declared Senators isn’t merely that they lack executive experience, but that we’ve never even seen them as part of a governing majority. They’ve been part of a minority — even a minority within their own party — and all they’ve had to do is play politics, to vote “no” and proclaim defiance. Put Ted Cruz in a position where he actually has to get a budget through, and I have no idea what kind of compromises he would make, or how tough a negotiator he’d be. So I evaluate them by your list and wonder how we can ever know?
Needs to know how to release govt strangleholds on the makers of the donuts while simultaneously putting a big foot on the necks of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and Houthis.
We do not need a President to run the Federal government. “Executive experience” is often assumed to be managerial in nature.
Given a sufficiently large organization, successful Presidents are the ones who know they have limited time to get anything done and arrive with one, maybe two major changes they want to make.
Reagan wanted to win the cold war and everything he did supported that, including unleashing the economy. He knew that the President does not make the economy work, the people do. All he had to do was get out of the way.
Nixon wanted to open China and change a bi-polar world to a tri polar one.
Obama wanted to grow the power of the state to support the progressive agenda.
Governor, Senator, Doctor, Dog Catcher. The question is, can this person focus and make one or two changes happen and will it be the changes we need most?
The last thing we need now is a good caretaker. We need a Red Adair type.
We need someone who will stand up and say the following (all of which is well within understood executive power):
More controversial, but I think valid:
Anything less than the first three means the GOP president is unwilling to do what is necessary to turn back the Leftist agenda. Since not one of them has the stones to do this, I know it won’t happen. No one on our side is as willing to fight, as willing to be radical as on the Left. We are losers, born to lose, born to compromise, born to let the other side win and win and win, never rolling back the clock.
I don’t want “attributes.” I want the candidate who is most willing and able to cut off Big Bird’s welfare check.
All very good attributes.
But the attribute which is the sine qua non for getting elected is the candidate must be a fighter.
He or she must be willing to put on the brass knuckles and take the fight directly to the Democratic candidate. Every day.
No more “my opponent is a fine person, dedicated to her/his family, blah blah blah” That’s what the Democratic candidate has spinners and the media for.
No leaving scandals and unsavory affiliations unmentioned and untouched.
What percentage of the vote would your ideal candidate be able to get? Maybe 15 or 20%, I think at the most if he is well spoken and very well funded. That includes the Primaries. That is why you won’t see anyone running on your platform, though it is what the Republic needs for sure. So we are back to asking, “What can actually be sold to the voters and accomplished in office?” It would be nice to undo 150 years of creeping Statism in one Administration but it just isn’t possible in the real world but I’m for all possible steps in the right direction.
I wonder if a good part of what made Reagan and Clinton successful is that they are/were extremely extroverted people?
Ethics apart, Bill Clinton was the perfect politician: that guy can’t get enough of people. Give him a crowd and he’ll just wallow in it.
People who tend toward introversion—what I think of as “normal people” since I’m among them, along with Bush I and II, Carter, Obama— expend rather than absorb energy in human interaction, and while this probably wasn’t as big a problem for Abraham Lincoln, it is a real handicap in our D & A.
The sheer numbers of people the president has to meet with, one after another, all day long, extracting information, offering information, and letting them feel like you’re paying attention to them This has nothing to do with the “content” of a presidency, or the morality, ethics or principles…just sheer, social stamina and the hazards of fatigue.
A big thing I try to look for is a good choice in priorities. I want to know no more than two things that are non-negotiable for a candidate and for which he will fight long, hard, and without compromise. In other words, I want to know what he won’t sell-out on because getting anything done in politics means having to sell-out on something.
If his priorities match mine, I’m exceedingly interested.
Don’t run on it. Just do it. Get in and then do it. Obama did not run on what he is doing.
The people would have to suffer through at least 4 years of the horror of an economy unbounded by massive regulations. Nothing they could do about it.
What I want most is a guy who wants to serve, rather than fundamentally transform America to his vision. That’s why I want executive experience, like a governor. The first thing an executive learns on the job is (if the job is big enough) that the job dictates what you can do, not the other way around.
When Bush W came into office, he had an agenda … that was forgotten six months later, because other events became more important. Obama’s failure is largely a result of his refusal to give up on his pre-presidential agenda, and just take care of the events happening in front of him. It’s like what they say about war – your plans are only good until the first shot is fired. After that, it’s all adaptation and thinking on your feet.
Taking care of everyday business is more important than “signature achievements” or trying to make a mark in the history books. I don’t want a visionary. I want a guy who can respond to reality, not perpetuate some romantic fantasy where he’s a hero that saves us.
On Mac computers (I imagine PCs have a counterpart), there is the Command-Z keystroke – for those calamitous errors we all make from time to time. (“Undo! Undo! Undo!”) I’d like to elect somebody who will for four straight years, no vacations or breaks, every single day, go to the Oval Office and press Command-Z over and over and over again.
I notice that nobody is saying that what they want is a candidate of meaningless generalities, like:
“I want to take back our country.”
“I will restore the promise of freedom in America.”
“I am going to fight for the middle class.”
“I will stand with the American people to reclaim the principles of freedom and prosperity that built this country.”
Too bad that’s not what people want, because it seems that is what we are getting.
Solid judgment. Even perfect ideological bona fides can’t help you if you have bad judgment.
Includes:
1. Being a good judge of character with allies and enemies.
2. Knowing when to be tough and when to be magnanimous.
3. Being able to resolve problems when values come into conflict (The freedom vs. security debate, for example.)
You left out Carly Fiorina–she impresses me.
Round out the diversity checklist. A XX-chromosome, some melanin, a nice disability…
You are asking the correct question, TR! This upcoming Presidential Election is so vital for the good of the world, never mind the United States. The qualities of the next President are so crucial. Good to encourage people to think about what is needed.
As a Canadian, it hurts that the present President has turned his back on Canada, and what should be one of the closest relationships in North America.
Oh, he merely turned his back on Alberta. He gets a great big cheering section in Ontario and Quebec for that!
;-)
I am born to kick ass but support the side that loses. Sigh.
Well, things will continue until they stop. Of course then, everyone loses.
I like her too. I just couldn’t find a picture on the Internet that included her. I don’t foresee her winning the nomination, but I do see her moving into the top five or six candidates. For example, she has a better chance, in my opinion, than Rick Santorum.
I’d love to see her take a significant cabinet post such as Treasury (which oversees the IRS). Some butt-kicking needs to take place, and I think she’d be willing to do it.
If she does well enough, I could see her as a possible VP candidate (which would be a nice offset to Hillary’s “elect me because I’m a woman” argument). Fiorina could be a great focal point for attacks on Clinton.
Yeah, but Mr. W bush also had some of this ability–being naturally political, or gregarious.
True, but somewhat tricky. The way you put it, you avoid the serious question of his purposes. I do not mean whether he was looking for a new intern, but to what extent he flattered people, to what extent he was flattered by them, & how he thought about the influence he had on people.
This must be wrong–surely, in the days of Lincoln, the president had far more real contact with real people–not scripted, controlled circumstances & events. There is reason to believe Lincoln was not just fundamentally ambitious, but, connected to that ambition, melancholy. He just knew what people needed & what he needed to get them along. That’s not so hard, maybe, for a magnanimous man, but it would play hell with normal people…
Yeah. You have to really believe you’re changing people’s lives…
I recommend you consider the possibility that politics is more about fear & anger than, let’s say, self-interest rightly understood. You have to ask yourself, would a few more democratic terms affect your life enough to scare you & into whose hands you might deliver yourself with a reasonable expectation to defend whatever you hold dear…
All three of us agree, but you guys know she is a certifiable FiCon, right?
Why cannot these CEOs & whatnot run for governor instead? It seems more reasonable, somewhat likelier of success, & better for the big nomination fight, too, if there is less wildness of notions & hopes.
@TT #29: You’re certainly not wrong but I just want to win the general. My original ‘most important’ list is out the window.
I’m thoroughly committed to running candidates with perhaps less experience than I would like but who also share my fiscal values, have the aptitude to adapt to new challenges and who could present enough of a “cool” ticket to win. A charismatic, conservative Cuban-American paired with a female ex-CEO of a large corporation who did run as good a race in CA as a Republican possibly could have sounds damn good to me.
We could nail the Dems on the ethnic and women issues with smart candidates who do truly support the capitalist system.