What I Look For in a President
Stephen Harris
October 20, 2004
Being a modern President is and should be a fine art. It is
simultaneously delicate and forceful. The President needs to be able to balance
the large scale and the small scale. He needs to delegate, integrate, mediate,
and mitigate. He needs to have integrity. He needs to be like the kid on the
playground who looks out for the little guy but doesn’t get pushed around by the
bullies. He needs to have allies big and small. He needs to respect his
constituency, his friends, and his enemies. He needs to be a diplomat.
So in that vein I will try to give a diplomatic critique of our presidential
candidates. However, I believe our choice to be clear. George W. Bush should not
be reelected President of the United States. He is under qualified at best and
dangerous at worst. Meanwhile John Kerry is qualified if not highly qualified to
lead the United States. Although Ralph Nader has an agenda with noble roots, he
is stubborn to put that agenda, noble as it may be, ahead of supporting the
obvious candidate at a time of tense international relations. I hope that no one
would vote for Ralph Nader, and if he really was noble he would drop out of the
race. He can run again in the next election.
My impression of Bush is that he has a one size fits all approach to the world.
He sees his courses of action as obvious choices to make, but he lacks the
clarity to make those choices responsibly. He has delegated too much and is out
of touch with the vast majority of people in the United States, if not the whole
world. His unapologetic, unwavering, never wrong approach is dangerous. It is
that attitude that enables him to label Kerry as a “flip-flopper”. Bush’s black
and white high level decision-making process does not belong in the role of
president. The factors involved in being president require a constant balance of
a practically infinite number of moving factors. By not adapting to these
factors Bush is not balancing them well. Now a lot of people are unhappy,
scared, and out of work. Ironically the people who have suffered under the Bush
administration are the same people Bush now oversimplifies his messages to.
“I am never wrong.” “Kerry is a flip-flopper.” “I am a war president.” Seems
pretty straight forward, but it is not. A person that admits no mistakes is not
to be trusted.
Meanwhile Kerry seems to base his beliefs on a broad base of knowledge and
involvement at multiple levels of government, society, and the world. He strikes
me as an honest, reasonable, and respectable man. The kind of man that doesn’t
provoke the world into Holy wars. The kind of man who would rally support from
our allies instead of alienating them. The kind of man who commands respect.