So you want to be President

President of the United States of America. Talk about a thankless job. You want to spend over a year and a half making promises that you know you can not keep, at least for everyone who ends up voting for you. Then spend the next four years under the microscope in a damned if you do and damned if you don't public environment, if you are lucky and win. Read the article below and try to figure out why this a dream job!

By Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

After the better part of a year with candidates on the stump and the first primary less than two months away, we finally are approaching the official starting point for the 2008 race for president. The media assure that we would virtually have to hole up in a cave not to know every nuance of every utterance made on the trail to the White House. I marvel at the endurance of the combatants and our own naiveté.

We are naïve if we think anything said on the campaign trail has much to do with the realities of office and the demands undreamed before they occur (and always at “the worst time”.) The debates of the campaign are a gage only of the candidates’ presentation skills and unquenchable thirst for an office which, by all accounts, will age him or her prematurely through those undreamed of demands and frustrated campaign promises.

The president inherits an agenda already heavy with burdens critical to this country’s welfare and unknown burdens dependent on events around the world over which we have little influence. Though immensely powerful, the office is limited by Congress in much that it can do by fiat domestically. Beyond our shores, the president is hemmed in by the impact of those actions on support needed for the national governing agenda domestically as well as our need for support around the globe for a more peaceful global community.

In the constant spotlight and insistence that campaign utterances be sized to fit print media headlines or uttered to be contained inside a bubble of spoken prose, the campaign obscures the true challenges of the office and handicaps the proper regard for the responsibilities of the office. I suspect that George HW Bush ruefully contemplates “No New Taxes” pledged during his campaign in 1988, and poor Hillary Clinton is hoist on her own petard by trying to display her thought process regarding the political choices faced by the governor of New York in his now abandoned attempt to legalize for worthy state enforcement and safety considerations, state issued drivers’ permits for undocumented aliens.

As we leave the warm-up lap, I know quite a bit about the candidates’ physical endurance, their stump quip quotient and their parsing of their parties’ essential interest blocs required for nomination next summer, but I know little about their thoughtfulness, their willingness to be president for all of the United States rather than the sum of the self interested blocs whose support garners them their parties’ nomination. Where do I find the information I seek?

Do I pay more attention to Governor Romney’s proficiency with a Democratic legislature than his flip-flop on abortion? What is the significance of the unsavory record of some of Giuliani’s associates? How meaningful on the national level is his quite evident success in cleaning up New York and his coolness and strong leadership in the wake of the sad events of 9/11? Can I distill anything from Hillary’s steadfastness not to retreat in the face of the Democratic herd’s insistence that she apologize for her vote on the Iraq war and her refusal to say she will immediately withdraw our troops? Where do I look for signs of maturity beyond his years in considering Senator Obama? Where are these candidates leading us? Is it to a continuation of cannibalism of the defeated and four more years of domestic unrest?

Some of these questions may yield to answers in the entrails of their campaigns, but most will not, and most assuredly our campaign process is not designed to yield answers to these questions. We will know that we have selected someone strong enough to bring together a governing coalition but not much else. A year ago I wrote of the election that had just occurred that it was the “bell curve election”. In 2006 enough voters from the 40% of the electorate that slide from Democrat to Republican with each election supported Democrats in Congress to shift political control. A year later we have little that is positive to show for that trust.

When I contemplate my half century as an observer and sometimes practitioner in national politics, I see little to encourage me that the needed structural changes will be at hand in my lifetime to bring about an election process that brings us together rather than one which sends the loser home to lick his wounds and connive to block any progress by the winner until it is his turn again to take control.

There is a huge political process industry made up of hundreds of think tanks, the media, grass root lobbying organizations, and candidates at both state and federal level invested in our combative system. I fear that there is just too much invested in the combative system we have to allow responsible change. It is rare indeed that on any significant issue of our day we can assemble a consensus to bring about change, and 2008 is no exception. Our candidates are not going to level with us on the Hobson’s choices we face internationally, nor the pain we should willingly inflict on ourselves to rid ourselves of the economic dependencies we have incurred in the mistaken belief that the day would never come when the bill for those choices would have to be paid.

What are some of those challenges? You have only to look at the turmoil in international markets as they rush from dollars into safer currencies and as oil spikes into three figures per barrel to know we are in for a world of hurt. As the cost works its way through our economy, no sector will be immune. The more the Fed moves to protect the economy from our folly, the lower the dollar will get. Some of my colleagues tell me that while foreign goods will get increasingly beyond our reach, the cheapness of our products and our productivity can insulate us from much of what goes on beyond our borders. I question that. It may be good macroeconomic theory, but I believe our dependence on foreign oil and the international consequences to our ability to lead caused by our irresponsibility may seriously destabilize international commerce and most of our trading partners with it. Ironically, Europe with a record high Euro has record low productivity and is facing its own moment of truth in the form of cheaper U.S. goods and what French President Sarkozy fears may become a trade war between the continents.

What to do and where will the leadership come to lead us from our morass? Clearly our political system is not structured to do so. My columns in the past on energy policy, trade, social security and health care entitlements, taxes, education and maintenance of core moral values do point the way to slowly work our way clear, but it is for the public to call forth leadership, and none of the current contestants appears poised to bite the hands of their polarized constituencies to steer the ship of state where it needs to go.

The public seldom gets better government than it deserves. As we approach a pivotal election year, the public is left to ponder its business as usual perspective, ask the hard questions of all the candidates and then vote thoughtfully on who should be given the responsibility to lead us into the second decade of this century. It is more than the candidates on trial. It is our nation. It is time we realized that.

Copyright © 2007 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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