What sane person would want a job that destroys your privacy, makes it impossible for you to go out on the street, subjects your family to intrusive media scrutiny, forces you to watch everything you say, and drives some people to want to take a shot at you? Apparently someone who feels that the power that comes with the office is worth the attendant indignities.
(Photo credit: USACE Europe District)
Ryan Young of the Competitive Enterprise Institute made this pithy observation. Why indeed? Because they are narcissists (ie, Obama) or megalomaniacs (ie, Romney). Regardless of my characterization, each has been selected in advance to represent the Anglo-American establishment which is run primarily by the Council on Foreign Relations. To ignore or overlook this is to play the game they want us to play: that the debates mean something. They don’t.
Young makes it clear that one needs to be corrupt – to have sold out – in order to have any chance at winning the prize:
“Great men are almost always bad men,” Lord Acton famously said. “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” Indeed, good men rarely run for president. And when they do, they rarely win. An honest man stands no chance against a Lyndon Johnson or a Richard Nixon. Yes, one slips through the cracks now and then.
We could use Grover Cleveland’s restraint in handling the economic crisis today. I have a particular fondness for Calvin Coolidge, who conspicuously lacked the pathological need for attention that characterizes most officeholders.
It’s the process of running for office that also inflicts moral damage:
Campaigning for even minor office requires a candidate to prostrate himself before people he’s never met, and make grand promises he may — or may not — keep. He must build himself up while tearing down his opponent through vicious attacks. Imagine what that does to a candidate’s mind — especially one that starts to believe his own hype.
A successful candidate often must hide his true beliefs, assuming he has any, tailoring his message to match his constituents’ wishes.
In other words, to be successful he has to sell his soul. That’s why I don’t want my son to grow up to be President. His soul is too valuable to lose in the process.
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