Ben Carson, the Superior Outsider [He is the real conservative outsider, not Trump]

While Jeb Bush feuds Donald Trump and others kowtow to him, only one candidate is seriously gaining on him.

Ben Carson is now tied with Trump in one Iowa poll and is close in others, an especially notable result given that The Donald has jammed a lifetime's worth of free media into the past couple of months.

Carson's rise suggests that it's possible to catch the populist wave roiling Republican politics and yet not be an obnoxious braggart who abuses anyone who crosses him and will say or do anything as long as he's getting attention. Ben Carson is a superior outsider to Donald Trump.

He is more gentlemanly and more conservative, with a more compelling life story. Carson is a man of faith who, despite his manifest accomplishments, has a quiet dignity and winsome modesty about him. Ben Carson is a throwback, whereas Donald Trump is a bold-faced name straight out of our swinish celebrity culture.

What they have in common is that they are political neophytes light on policy details who are memorable communicators precisely because they speak and carry themselves so differently from other politicians. Although the similarities stop there — Carson is what Trump calls "low energy," and yet he makes it work for him.

At the Faith and Freedom event in Washington in June, Carson gave a speech that had no obvious applause lines, never rose above a conversational tone, had very little political content — and left perhaps the best impression of any presentation by a candidate.

Few politicians have ever wielded soft-spokeness to such rhetorical effect. Carson aced the Fox debate when in his closing statement he didn't puff himself up and attempt to soar like candidates always do, but gently said a few nice things about his background as a surgeon, with a touch of humor. It was a hit.

If Carson's surge continues, one wonders if other contenders now doing all they can to kowtow to and copy the bombastic real-estate mogul will instead decide to kowtow to and copy the mild-mannered retired neurosurgeon.

Carson is a more natural fit for conservatives than Trump. If you like your outsider not to favor higher taxes, not to have once opposed the ban of partial birth abortion, not to speak favorably of socialized medicine, not to have been an erstwhile booster of Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, and not to have experience buying off politicians, Ben Carson (or Carly Fiorina) is a much better bet than Donald Trump.

And Carson is altogether a more sympathetic figure. He rose from nothing; Trump took over the family real-estate business. Carson's mom was one of 24 kids, had a third-grade education and worked as a domestic; Trump's father built tens of thousands of apartments in Brooklyn and Queens and amassed a fortune of $300 million.

Carson is a serious Christian who has a powerful testimonial about getting down on his knees as a young man unable to control his temper and saying, "Lord, unless you help me, I'm not going to make it."

Carson tells of how he prayed to God to give him the right woman and how he has been married to his wife, Candy, for 40 years; Trump brags about the beautiful women he has bedded.

Trump says he likes "The Art of the Deal" better than any book except the Bible, but he appears to have read just one of them. His evasions when he was asked a few basic questions in a Bloomberg interview about the Good Book were hilariously ham-fisted (he can't answer what his favorite verse is because that's too personal a question).

Trump is the most blatantly secular major presidential candidate since Howard Dean, and of course, he is running as a Republican, not a Democrat. Trump will have to do well in the Iowa caucuses that have been won most recently by Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and George W. Bush — a devout Catholic, an ordained Baptist preacher and an evangelical, none of whom were prone to fits of awkwardness and shyness when the Bible came up.

Trump is, to say the least, not of this mold. He is a successful creature of our culture of conspicuous display and tasteless braggadocio. It's no accident that he played himself in WWE wrestling dramas, or that he names everything after himself, or that he doesn't have enough superlatives for own personal qualities and wealth and accomplishments.

Not content simply to brag about his real achievements, Trump says things that are obviously self-inflating fables. Does anyone really believe that other candidates came up to Trump after the Fox debate and told him he had won, as he maintained in his post-debate interview with CNN's Don Lemon?

Carson has certainly made the most of his own renown, churning out best-sellers and raking in the speaking fees, but he operates from a baseline of self-respect and respect for others.

It's impossible to imagine him engaging in juvenile insult wars with random targets of his ire. Or imagine him calling a female journalist a "bimbo" for asking questions that he found unwelcome. Or commenting crudely on women's appearances.

Like Trump, Carson excoriates the culture of political correctness and has said his share of outrageous things, but he also doesn't consider it beneath him to occasionally apologize.

America long ago turned its back on self-restraint and gentlemanliness. Conservatives were the last holdouts, but their dalliance with Trump makes you wonder if they, too, are willing to surrender to celebrity excess as the new norm.

Ben Carson stands for something different. His personal story shows how true class isn't about riches, but about character. Donald Trump has all the finest things and I'd hazard to guess barely as much class as Ben Carson's penniless mother struggling to raise her sons had in her pinky.

Carson may not ultimately have the political pull of Trump, who is more mediagenic and can potentially spend much more money. Yet, if conservatives want to flirt with an unconventional candidate, Carson provides the opportunity to do it without a guilty conscience.

Just wish one of the candidates could measure up to the standards laid out by two early Presidents as that by which they would measure their Presidencies.

Below are the words of the second President of the U. S., John Adams, a signer of the Constitution, who, in his First Inaugural's closing paragraph, laid out his understanding of the qualifications for the Office of President.

Inaugural Address of President John Adams

- (Excerpted & reformatted final words)

Philadelphia, March 4, 1797
“. . . as something may be expected, the occasion, I hope, will be admitted as an apology if I venture to say that
- if a preference, upon principle, of a free republican government, formed upon long and serious reflection, after a diligent and impartial inquiry after truth;
- if an attachment to the Constitution of the United States, and a conscientious determination to support it until it shall be altered by the judgments and wishes of the people, expressed in the mode prescribed in it;
- if a respectful attention to the constitutions of the individual States and a constant caution and delicacy toward the State governments;
- if an equal and impartial regard to the rights, interest, honor, and happiness of all the States in the Union, without preference or regard to a northern or southern, an eastern or western, position, their various political opinions on unessential points or their personal attachments;
- if a love of virtuous men of all parties and denominations;
- if a love of science and letters and a wish to patronize every rational effort to encourage schools, colleges, universities, academies, and every institution for propagating knowledge, virtue, and religion among all classes of the people, not only for their benign influence on the happiness of life in all its stages and classes, and of society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our Constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments;
- if a love of equal laws, of justice, and humanity in the interior administration;
- if an inclination to improve agriculture, commerce, and manufacturers for necessity, convenience, and defense;
- if a spirit of equity and humanity toward the aboriginal nations of America, and a disposition to meliorate their condition by inclining them to be more friendly to us, and our citizens to be more friendly to them;
- if an inflexible determination to maintain peace and inviolable faith with all nations, and that system of neutrality and impartiality among the belligerent powers of Europe which has been adopted by this Government and so solemnly sanctioned by both Houses of Congress and applauded by the legislatures of the States and the public opinion, until it shall be otherwise ordained by Congress;
- if a personal esteem for the French nation, formed in a residence of seven years chiefly among them, and a sincere desire to preserve the friendship which has been so much for the honor and interest of both nations;
- if, while the conscious honor and integrity of the people of America and the internal sentiment of their own power and energies must be preserved, an earnest endeavor to investigate every just cause and remove every colorable pretense of complaint;
- if an intention to pursue by amicable negotiation a reparation for the injuries that have been committed on the commerce of our fellow-citizens by whatever nation, and if success can not be obtained, to lay the facts before the Legislature, that they may consider what further measures the honor and interest of the Government and its constituents demand;
- if a resolution to do justice as far as may depend upon me, at all times and to all nations, and maintain peace, friendship, and benevolence with all the world;
- if an unshaken confidence in the honor, spirit, and resources of the American people, on which I have so often hazarded my all and never been deceived;
- if elevated ideas of the high destinies of this country and of my own duties toward it, founded on a knowledge of the moral principles and intellectual improvements of the people deeply engraven on my mind in early life, and not obscured but exalted by experience and age;
and, with humble reverence, I feel it to be my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me in any degree to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two Houses shall not be without effect.
With this great example before me, with the sense and spirit, the faith and honor, the duty and interest, of the same American people pledged to support the Constitution of the United States, I entertain no doubt of its continuance in all its energy, and my mind is prepared without hesitation to lay myself under the most solemn obligations to support it to the utmost of my power.
And may that Being who is supreme over all, the Patron of Order, the Fountain of Justice, and the Protector in all ages of the world of virtuous liberty, continue His blessing upon this nation and its Government and give it all possible success and duration consistent with the ends of His providence.” - John Adams, First Inaugural

Then, the Author of our Declaration of Independence and President of the U. S., Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 Inaugural Address laid out what might be considered to be "qualifications" for the American presidency:

(Excerpt, "Our Ageless Constitution," p. xiv, reformatted)
"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation;
- entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;
= enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;
- acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter
—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
- Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
- This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you,
- it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
- Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
- peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;
- the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies;
- the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;
- a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided;
- absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;
- a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
- the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
- economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened;
- the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;
- encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid;
- the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
- freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected.
These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

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