Posted on 09/15/2007 2:23:49 AM PDT by qlangley
The separation of powers is right at the heart of the US Constitution. It was developed for several reasons. One is the basic one of checks and balances with which everyone is familiar, but there is another. Talent is not generalizable. Just because someone is good at one thing it does not mean they would be good at a different job.
The American electorate understands this instinctively. In the whole of US history just three serving members of Congress – House and Senate combined – have been elected to the Presidency. Presidents are much more likely to be drawn from the ranks of state governors. The only Washington job from which someone has a better than even chance of being elected President is . . . President. It is more often than not that Presidents get re-elected, but, while Vice-Presidents and Senators are good at becoming candidates, they are bad at winning elections.
The barrier a DC career poses to election as President is longstanding and wide in its scope. Speakers of the House are prominent leaders and powerful figures in their own right. Many have pursued the Presidency. Exactly one has succeeded – James Polk. And he returned to Tennessee after being Speaker and ran for the Presidency as a state governor.
It is 80 years since a serving member of the cabinet (Herbert Hoover) was elected President. And since then only one person (Bush the Elder) with any cabinet experience has been elected to the job. Serving in the cabinet seems to count against someone’s chances. Take John Connally, for instance. He was governor of Texas, and governing a major state would seem, self-evidently, to qualify someone for the Presidency. He rounded off that experience by becoming Treasury Secretary.
(Excerpt) Read more at quentinlangley.net ...
“Why do parties keep proposing Senators for the Presidency? It’s inexplicable.”
Couldn’t have said this better myself. The cloistered, dysfunctional Senate continues to show its ineptitude at running the country. Many of them are too busy stroking their massive egos running for president to be effective leaders in the Senate. The immigration fiasco, their foolish grandstanding in questioning the integrity of Gen. Petraeus, and so many other things reveal their split from reality.
Then there is Hillary Clinton, who has never run anything in her life except the failed health care fiasco. At least Bill, as horrible an excuse for a president as he was, held the governorship of a state. Would someone tell me what Hillary Clinton, or for that matter, Barrack Obama, have accomplished in the Senate? I see a big fat zero for both of them! Who would you hire for a CEO of a corporation, someone with a track record of running a company or someone with no such experience?
I don’t think we have ever elected a mayor of a large city, either, but that is still a better choice for president than a Senator. Rudy Guiliani has been mayor of a city larger than many states, and did an effective job.
Our presidential selection process in this country is simply nuts! Instead of competence, experience, and ability, we let the media circus make our decisions for us, and wonder why our government is dysfunctional.
Well said.
Wouldn't that say that we as a nation are rather shallow and we prefer entertainment over substance?
That said, parties don't nominate these people. They nominate themselves. The role of parties has been much diminished since 1960 when Joe Kennedy figured out how to use primaries to go around the party establishment to get the nomination for Jack.
I’d rather have one of the ex-governors as president than one of the senate folks.
>>Our presidential selection process in this country is simply nuts!
But it’s the parties that get it wrong. The public seems very clued in. Parties choose senators as their candidates, but none has actually been elected in my lifetime.
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