Help Wanted, President. Looking for a Qualified Applicant in 2024

Every four years, starting in 2011, I've posted my thoughts on politics under the title: Help Wanted, President.  I usually rank contenders on a point scale, giving them credit for various things that ought to help them govern wisely.  And Lord knows, it's a hard job and they'll need that help.  An ideal candidate might for instance have served in the military, had a career in business, and then gone into politics.  Again, in an ideal scenario, he or she would have started out small, perhaps as a State Assembly Person, and worked their way up to a responsible executive role.  Governor of a mid sized, politically diverse state would be very appealing.  I'm not into Historic Firsts as much as some, but I'll give a few bonus credits to a qualified candidate who brings unique perspectives into the Oval Office.  

Well, that's not the kind of election we're gonna have this time around.  There has been effectively no Primary process by which candidates are tested and the field winnowed.  Biden and Trump are both very well known, and each man is loathed by approximately 50% of the electorate.  

And its hard to look to the VP's as a tie breaker.  I believe Kamala Harris is considerably sharper than she is portrayed.  Some of this is the unenviable role of a Veep....don't show up The Boss.  If I were to apply my standard criteria to rating her she does come up a bit light.  She got her prior jobs as Attorney General and US Senator by political patronage in the One Party State that is California.  Her Presidential bid in 2020 was so lame that she had to bail before the first actual votes were cast.  You'd like to think that she's learned a few things in the last three and a half years.  But of course the question for her, and indeed for Biden and Trump, is whether she's learned the right lessons.

Trump's VP selection is not yet known, but will in the tradition of the day immediately be derided as some combination of evil and stupid, somehow even worse than he is, and that's sayin' something.  Who this person is, and what her (?) qualifications actually are will not be relevant.

So we have a classic Lesser of Two evils scenario.  I don't like these.  I've voted over the years for Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  I've had times when my choice won and disappointed me, and others when their opponent has won and turned out to be quite good.  Those who have been sworn in as President since my first rodeo in 1976 have varied wildly in both character and in competence.  The last genuinely good men I've seen in the White House were Ford and probably Carter.  The most effective politician was, despite his moral failings, Bill Clinton.  I'm leaving Obama aside for now....it takes a while for the perspective of history to come into focus.

When I posted Help Wanted in 2016 I described then longshot candidate Trump as "..a large angry man with orange hair."  He is without question an objectionable man with dubious morals and a tendency to bully.  His record is hard to judge due to the distortions of Covid and the continuous efforts of what is referred to as The Deep State to sabotage him.  He also made many poor choices in selecting people for his Administration.  He remains large, orange and angry, and he will want to get even with some people.  Some of whom, in my opinion, have it coming.  But pre-Covid the economy was good, we did not engage in many foreign misadventures and whether you liked it or not, we did have leadership.

President Biden on the other hand, is cognitively and perhaps physically impaired.  The clues have been abundant in the last couple of years.  Sheltered from demanding appearances, slurring and misspeaking, confusing the names of world leaders.  When the real villains of the world see the Commander in Chief stumbling and falling repeatedly they take notice and are emboldened to greater malicious actions.  The real time implosion of the myth of Biden Competence in the recent debate was shocking even as it was unsurprising.  It can't be unseen.  Softball taped and edited interviews with friendly journalists won't help.  Moderate ability to read off a teleprompter is not enough.  Every time he now appears wearing his Cool Dude aviator sunglasses the instinctive reaction is going to be that he is hiding weird, unblinking eyes.  I have a career in medicine and the experience of two parents with dementia, I've seen this movie.  It never has a happy ending.

We've had impaired presidents before, and it has gone badly.  Ronald Reagan was not well during the latter part of his second term.  We got Oliver North running an illegal, spooky foreign policy on the side.  Woodrow Wilson seriously botched the reorganization of the world in 1918-19.  We are still paying the price for that.  The parallels between Edith Wilson and the current First Lady are unsettling.

Oh, but we've always muddled through.  Yes, but in times that were less complex and in which the power of the Presidency was more constrained.

I think the current administration - and it is with difficulty I avoid the term regime - has seen this coming for a long time.  And like all desperate factions has been willing to do anything to stay in power.  We've never had a President send armed agents to raid the home of his main rival.  Professions of non-involvement aside, the efforts to keep Trump off the ballot, tied up in court, maybe actually in jail, are the stuff of  banana republics.  Once normalized by success they would be repeated.

So I'm hoping for the best.  As of now Biden vows to fight on.  It's about even money whether that will soon change and Vice President Harris gets to make her case.  Ideally she'd tap a running mate to reassure those of us whose votes can be swayed.  Trump could and should do the same.  He's sharper than Biden, but he's not young either.

Perhaps we'll see  Harris-Beshear vs. Trump-Stefanik.  Each team would have a fair bit of baggage to unload, but our Republic would be better served by this option than what is barreling down the road at us presently.

My previous Help Wanted posts....

For the 2012 election

For 2016....what happened???

2020 The Covid Election - with bonus Woodrow Wilson insights