"Why can't we have a president with
both great values and a high IQ?"
Anyone who considers what a person must go through to rise through local politics until he is "available" for the presidency will learn that success in local politics involves in every instance that I know personally corrupting experience. Scarcely anyone escapes. The personality required for political success requires exposure of the self, brashness, ability to survive public humiliation and defeat.
Fund-raising is thinly disguised solicitation of bribery at best. At worst it's not disguised at all. A few people of great personal wealth can distance themselves from direct solicitation, but most candidates have to do some dirty work themselves.
Many men in politics work with young, bright, ambitious, available women. The people who work around politicians know about many of the affairs. People didn't care in the past, today it's worth your career to be caught in an office affair.
Politics is a terrible school for character. Trade is not so wonderful either. Farming is much better. Give me a young man or woman who rides, and hunts fpr fppd, and reads law by the light of a pine knot, who surveys the wilderness, and practices law among the peasantry from which he sprang, and I'll give you a great president. |
