How to Get Experienced Presidents
Stephen Harper
Jim Henley offers a modest proposal for improving the caliber of Presidential leadership:
But because of the bizarre eligibility rules, the vast majority of our candidates have no experience at what matters, running a large, rich country. It’s fashionable to blame voters for the poor quality of American leadership, but it’s not like the candidates have much track record for the voters to judge. The US presidency is not an entry-level job. We should change the constitution and only consider applicants with a proven record of successful leadership of pretty big, pretty rich nations. Like, conclude two successful terms running Canada and then come talk to us. (Or, France!)
Indeed, it does seem to me that you could imagine the leaderless Republican
Party being well-led by Stephen Harper. Canada’s already sending us a lot of its conservative political pundits (Frum, Krauthammer) so why not politicians? And back during the 2004 campaign, if the Democrats were destined to nominate an Iraq War supporter why not a charismatic one like Tony Blair?
36 Responses to “How to Get Experienced Presidents”
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June 15th, 2009 at 9:25 am
How about Bibi? He actually live here for a long time and attended American schools like MIT.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Like, conclude two successful terms running Canada and then come talk to us. (Or, France!)
France should be more than an “or”, since it’s the only other major industrial democracy with a strong-presidential system. A prime minister doesn’t have the requisite experience in standing around for parades and other ceremonial shit.
It does, however, raise the amusing hypothetical of what the US would have looked like with President Trudeau in charge at the end of the 1970s.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Canada’s already sending us a lot of its conservative political pundits (Frum, Krauthammer)
…Brooks, Steyn, and I’m sure there are more. It’s a little weird.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:35 am
I think experience requirements should not be part of the constitution. Even the age requirement seems suspect to me. That said if we let people who weren’t natural born US citizens run for office it would be a dramatic improvement. It seems like denying full political participation to all our citizens is not a good idea. Obama was born in the US, but if he had not been would that be a reason not to elect him? In addition I favor open immigration. My sense is that over time people would see the value of experienced leadership and at least some of our presidents would have lead other countries in their past.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Arguably being Governor of a large state like NY, CA, FL or TX is a better qualification for US Prez than being leader of a small country like Canada. This is presumably why we usually elect Governors and not Senators.
And I know this post was tongue-in-cheek, but Blair as leader of the Democrats? Are there still American liberals who don’t understand what a truly awful person Tony Blair is? I’d vote for Mitt Romney before I voted for Blair.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Re: We should change the constitution and only consider applicants with a proven record of successful leadership of pretty big, pretty rich nations
Just so. In Mr. Yglesias’ deracinated cosmopolitan dystopia, people ought to have no more feeling for one country than another. Countries are so out-of-date, don’t you know. Our idenity is whatever we choose it should be. Foucault would not approve of countries. We should just be willing to up and move to whatever country offers us the best financial prospects.
Some of us, by God, reject this cosmopolite’s dream, and believe that loyalty and love for the nation are more important than ‘a proven track record’ of successful leadership, or some such nonsense.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Obviously, Canada has sent us Frum and Krauthammer in retaliation for our dumping toxic sludge into the Great Lakes. If we don’t stop soon, we can expect to see Mark Steyn arriving soon. They play rough up there!
June 15th, 2009 at 9:44 am
How fun would it be to be Hector’s therapist?
No, seriously.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Given the role the neutering of the SEC played in the economic collapse, why don’t we begin here in the US by banning from the Presidency anyone who was previously the target of SEC investigations for insider trading?
June 15th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Quoting Vanya:
Doesn’t being Governor of Alaska count?
June 15th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Conservative mischief makers are pouring from all over the globe.
They all have their toted bibles bookmarked at Mark 6.4, and look for comfort in the words “a prophet is not without honor save in his own country.”
At least Jesus had the courage to stay put and preach to an inhospitable home crowd.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:05 am
I suspect that the ‘Hector’ and ‘Myles SG’ characters are written by the same individual. That is how you get a “socialist” so madly in love with national borders.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Arguably being Governor of a large state like NY, CA, FL or TX
Texas is actually a “weak” governor state, all puns aside. The LT governor actually wields more power. The Gov basically signs death warrants and attends parades.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Why oh Why,
Read Sorel. Sorel was more of a socialist while taking his dog for a walk then you could be in your whole life. He had also the wisdom to see that socialism isn’t about making men happy, it’s about making them good.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:13 am
This Hector is a very good parody of the real Hector, though I don’t think Hector uses “By God”.
The real Hector and Myles SG are quite different.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:21 am
This is a good parody, evidently the parodists are getting better. And no, i don’t use ‘By God’.
I do believe in nationalism though, although in my ideal world large countries would dissolve into smaller ones. I strongly dislike cosmopolitan, globalism in all its forms, and I think Mr. Yglesias’ dream of a society where people had no ties of loyalty to their countries, their leaders, and their peoples would be a horrid one.
My ideal world would be one without much emigration, and without hipsters who saw themselves as ‘citizens of the world’.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Trolling on your own blog: naughty, naughty.
Yes indeed, and Bliar has another claim, being an enabler (architect even) of the Iraq disaster while letting poor George take all the blame.
I don’t know who would like this idea more: Americans or the rest of us; it would be a close run thing.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Blog software needs to implement 4chan-style tripcodes to make it harder to fake accounts without requiring people to register them so these whole “is that really him?” discussions go away.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:27 am
It shouldn’t be necessary to point out to this crowd who would be President right now if non-natives who had run California were eligible for the Presidency.
– Chris
June 15th, 2009 at 10:28 am
The way to fix is is to get rid of picking donk and GOP nominees via primaries and go back to the old way where party bosses picked them.
The only problem with this is that it would seem that the real advantage is that primaries are real dramatic, and in a media driven selection process, that’s to be preferred since it gives media types more and better stuff to cover versus the old way of doing things. It would also seem that the campaign ’started’ a lot earlier than the last time around too, so as to fill all the ‘dead air’ that internet commenters need to fill.
In addition, the first pres nominee for a major party that was picked via primaries was Kennedy, very telegenic and very inexperienced, not that he was a disaster or anything, but he was the type of guy who the ‘new’ system favors that the old system did not.
In addition, if they went back to picking nominees at the conventions, the public would only be subjected to the election process for about two months rather than two years like last time around, and I think that would be a fine thing.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:46 am
This is a fascinating idea… I can just see the 2008 primaries in this alternate reality right now:
Republicans: McCain, Romney, Harper, Sarkozy, Schwarzenegger, Howard, and (darkhorse) Uribe
Democrats: Obama, Clinton, Blair, Merkel, and (darkhorse) Bachelet.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Tony Blair was charismatic?
I think I don’t have the gene that lets you sense charisma. Blair seemed like a goop and a shallow opportunist to me.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Re Chris Cunningham @ 19
Considering that the Governator is now hugely unpopular in California, I seriously doubt that he would have been elect POTUS.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Well, that rules out Abraham Lincoln
June 15th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
the first pres nominee for a major party that was picked via primaries was Kennedy
Kennedy only won 10 primaries in 1960 – I would hardly say that he was “picked via the primaries” as most convention votes were not decided via primaries at that time. The first election campaign where a majority of the states had primaries wasn’t until 1972.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Re right
1. I’m not sure that Sarkozy would really qualify as a Rethuglican.
2. Add Bibi Netanyahu to the Rethuglican side and Salem Fayyed to the Democratic side.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
There is a slight difficulty; Stephen Harper isn’t really quite as conservative as GOP would like.
And the other fact that he’s a robot and has less charm than a tree bark.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Expanding on what SLC @26 and Myles SG @27 said, I’m not sure the Republicans would be able to really attract that much more talent by going abroad. Cameron (yeah, I know, not PM (yet), but not unlikely given Labour’s collapse), Merkel, and Sarkozy are not nearly conservative enough to be accepted by GOP primary voters–their policies would be considered center-left in the U.S.. Australia’s John Howard might be popular on taxation and military issues, but his government implemented a number of initiatives which would be considered anathema to most Republicans, including expanded rights for LBGT couples, a carbon trading system, and a substantial tightening of regulations on private gun ownership.
I suppose Maggie Thatcher could be brought out of retirement–hell, the fact that she has dementia now would probably be a bonus given the current state of the Republican Party.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Re Jason L
We could also add Gordon Brown to the Democrats, although considering he’s a walking political corpse, they as likely as not wouldn’t take him.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Sarkozy isn’t a centre-right politican; he is an opportunist politician. There is a difference.
A centre-right politician is Adenauer, Kohl, Pompidou. One longs for the days when France produced grand statesmen of the calibre of de Gaulle and Pompidou instead of banalities like Sarkozy, who, one must note, can’t even speak French properly.
Listening to him speak is like listening to a buzzsaw.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
A problem could be that you could have a rich or bankrolled foreigner come in with alternate agendas not necessarily good for the US and yet because money rules all they win. I’d like to have much more faith in the republic, but there has to be some rules around this. At least the person has to be a citizen, you don’t many Presidents committing crimes with diplomatic immunity. Weird.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I think Ahmedinejad would be a great candidate for GOP. His views on gays and lesbians, women rights, nuclear power, the proper role of religion in politics — check, check, check, check. Yes, there are some blots in his record, like expansion of socialized medicine.
Moreover, he has experience in a political system that seems closest to GOP ideal: the division of power between 4 non-equal branches: executive, legislative, judicial and God (I understand that Dick Cheney, by his own admission, occupied the fourth branch here).
Just give guy a necktie and make him give a reassuring speech at the meeting of American Jewish Organizations
June 15th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
I think the GOP would really struggle to find leadership abroad. No other western country has a political party pushed so far to the right that is not openly ridiculed or branded as Fascist.
Any political party running a campaign based on the GOP ideals (pro-gun, anti-abortion) would be openly laughed at in any other country.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
As a Canadian conservative, I’d have to agree with Myles SG’s comment: the Canadian PM version of Harper would not be acceptable to the GOP base. I’ve been trying to think of who the closest current GOP politician to Harper would be, but I’ve failed to come up with an analogous figure.
One thing to keep in mind, though: Harper was much more conservative as opposition leader than he has been as PM, which I think shows the CW that national politicians govern towards the center, out of necessity if nothing else. This is a useful thing to keep in mind as the left attacks the day’s policy shifts by the Obama administration.
June 16th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Well, you guys sent us Ignatieff so I suppose it’s only fair.
Harper’s not being very conservative (by US standards) at present, but I think the status quo has something to do with that. Give him a country with private health care and a large military and he’d be happy as a clam.
June 16th, 2009 at 4:06 am
msmackle must have missed the eight years prior to the current Amerlican administration. I have whiplash from that sharp right turn.