Richie Rich for President?
What, with all the commotion going on about Donald Trump, I had to weigh in. Conservatives always complain that ‘if we only had a person who has successfully run a business in the White House’….. Let’s have a look at this ‘wish’ of theirs and identify it for what it is. You know, if you have a look at Richie Rich, Donald resembles him as he would appear grown up. Hopefully, Ritchie wouldn’t need a squirrel’s nest on the top of his head.
First of all, being rich in itself is not part of the skill set needed to be the President of the United States. I don’t have to remind people that there are three branches of government. The Founding Fathers had intended that each check the power of the others. Using Trump as an example, does he think he can just fire people as he does on his television show? Outside of his fantasy show, where people allow themselves to be made fools of by him each week and where he is free to be the ‘big shot’, people in reality are not little shepherd children that he can awe through the mere honor of his presence. I am sure that the 535 members of Congress are not going to be so easily impressed. Cooperation and negotiating skills with equal partners is not something you can command. In a leader, judgment and wisdom trumps (no pun intended) just being wealthy. I discussed leadership and what it meant in this hub http://hubpages.com/hub/Take-Me-to-Your-Leader-Who-Do-You-Emulate-Part-I.
Trump flunks; he is neither reflective nor humble. He talks about his net worth as compared to another GOP contender, Mitt Romney, in terms of who is the wealthiest. In the terms of what sort of character needs to be found in the person who would be king, is that relevant? I find Bill Gates to be a 1000 times more palatable then Trump, and Gates has the most money. I am sorry, but it has to be obvious that I don’t like this fellow very much. He is hardly the captain of industry he likes to see himself as. If I inherited as much money as he did from his father, I would have very little excuse not to have done well with it. At this point, I would trust a former community organizer over a cackling Donald Duck, anytime.
The other point is that history does not show that the most successful Presidents were former masters at the world of business and commerce. So what is the basis of the Conservative’s statement regarding how such men make better Presidents? There certainly isn’t any track record. Looking back over the 20th century, presidents that were rated great and near great included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Which one of these men were considered a ‘captain of industry'? Our most successful presidents were not focused on running a business, so who says that the office of the president benefits by having that aspect of a persons background in the resume? No one was particularly impressed with the pedigree of Ross Perot who was a third party candidate in the 1992 presidential election. He too, claimed that his being a CEO at Electronic Data System (EDS) was a qualifying factor. Based on that experience, only he had the wherewithal to get Washington into line. We all know how that came out; his net worth of over 3 billion dollars did not stop him from using chicken production analogies to explain the intricacies of the economy.
In conclusion, conservatives, as always, need to check themselves and tell me true why a corporate baron would make a better president with evidence that will hold water. Thank you for your attention.
