How come Dr. Sowell isn’t running for President? We need a rational and logical thinker such as him
Dr. Sowell deals in reality.
A politician with good rhetorical skills can create a new Garden of Eden in people's minds, though only in their minds. However, that is sufficient, if that vision or illusion can be kept alive until election day, and its failure to materialize afterwards can be explained away by the obstruction of villains.
So long as the voters buy it, the politicians will keep selling it.
Vote McPain????? You don't want the wrong lizard to win!!!!
How come Dr. Sowell isn’t running for President? We need a rational and logical thinker such as him
Are there actually any other "rational thinkers like him?"I have been using this tagline for a while, merely as a way to advocate (alas, how certain it is to be futilely!) for the selection of someone like him for VP. Knowing that Sowell himself is about 77, and considers McCain at 71 to be too old.
Congressman Billybob (actual name, John Armor) recently contended the Asheville, NC Republican primary for nomination to Congress a week ago - and if you checked out his debates on Youtube you would see that you would instantly prefer him to any of the remaining three candidates for nomination as POTUS (in fact, BTW, he did a fundraiser a year ago to get money, I think $1000, to pay the Duke student newspaper to reprint one of Professor Sowell's pieces on the denouement of the Duke Lacrosse "rape" case). In a 3-man race, Armor drew a paltry 10% of the vote.
That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the likelihood of getting a "rational thinker like him" elected President. I had such high hopes, in the late eighties/early nineties, for Jack Kemp. Congressman Kemp redefined conservative political economics by convincing the Republican Party that excessive tax rates were too high a price to pay for fighting inflation, and had been elevated to the level of not merely diminishing but of negative returns. Before Kemp, the Democrats had the Republicans cornered - Democrats would fight for higher spending, getting credit for being Santa Claus, and the Republicans would lose that battle and then "win" the battle to control the deficit by raising tax rates - getting blame for being the Grinch. No wonder Democrats controlled the House continuously for the 40 years from 1955 to 1995!
Kemp was also aggressively non-racist; he would show up at NAACP meetings when no other Republican would do so, and was able to defend his politics in that sort of venue. Alas, Dole nominated him for VP - and he proved to be little more suited to the role of VP candidate than Ross Perot's sidekick, Admiral Stockdale. In the debate, Al Gore found a snarky way of flattering Kemp while smearing the white middle class Republican - and Kemp thanked him for the compliment! Kemp was every inch the Republican political hero, as he had been every inch a star professional quarterback for the Buffalo Bills in the old AFL before the merger with the NFL. Yet signally failing to defend the Republican base from Gore's smear was all it took to make Kemp a has-been on the national political stage. It was that ghastly.
If politics is that treacherous for a rational, competent public speaker like the lawyer John Armor - and even for the intellectual star quarterback and political pro Jack Kemp - what chance is there of ever getting a Thomas Sowell as far as the nomination to national office? Face it, Reagan was one-of-a-kind. And even he wasn't perfect.
And of course Sowell's article itself points out how effective the demagogues are at attacking rationality. This article of mine discusses why journalism plays the role it does in that process.
I am happy that Mr. Sowell is not running for president because he is far too valuable as a social observer and commentator. He could not function in a sea of political schmooze. I would be very happy if our president, who ever that is, would regularly seek and heed Mr. Sowell’s counsel.