When did leading the greatest nation on the planet become a popularity contest? Only an immature and undeniably biased effort like Slate would attempt to postulate and defend such a juvenile notion.

Thank you for your time.

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Agreed.

Most people want to deny it but its true. Whats best for the country is oft the least popular route. Most people i know parents "spanked" them when they did wrong. Sure we all hated it but in the end it made me each of us better person.

America doesn't want to be disciplined, they just want to be spoiled and have no consequences, have "daddy" deal with everything, and have the least negative effect on them. If you owe $5,000.00 to a credit card company, a responsible parent would give you a small portion of that and encourage you to work and save to pay back. Not popular at all. But and irresponsible parent would pay it ll and say, its ok, i got it covered. The popular path.

To loose weight you have to diet and exercise. A popular president would tell you to pop a pill.You would see instant results and would think he's the greatest ever, but after a while the weight will rush back... temporary fix. But, an unpopular president will tell you, diet and exercise. So you diet and exercise, and you hate him because its so slow and hard but when you reach your target weight, you stay that weight, it may be long after the former president has left office but he initiated a long term, permanent fix.

While his decisions may not be popular now, his "diet and exercise" type permanent fixes will end up doing you better in the long run than the "popping pills" method. Don't think that its true? Look at how everyone is saying how quickly they'll "pop a pill"(withdraw troops) for the iraq problem, "pop another pill"(gas tax holiday) for the gas problem, etc.

No-one is saying hey lets do this, and in 10 - 15 years the problem will be solved, its always, give me 6 months, tada, finish. Next.

Don't think about lowering gas prices dramatically for your next fill up, because they'll shoot right back up... think about lowering gas prices gradually and have them stay low for decades. Thats what I want to hear the next president say.

This is a long post, so I'll apologize in advance.

Perhaps we are all pointing at the wrong factors in deciding who will occupy the most powerful position on earth.

We have some folks who are "single issue" voters. They vote for whoever agrees with them on their most burning issue.

We have an analogue to that...special interests...not really much difference except the media would have you believe that "special interest groups" are "bad." Not sure what qualifies you to be in either category.

Then we have the philosophical voters of all types (Government Responsible for Everything, Government Responsible for Nothing & all the positions in-between.

What I'm not seeing is Character & Vision.

My personal method to choose my candidate is to start with basic qualifications:

Legal- Natural Born US Citizen over 35/36?-system takes care of that for me...no real decision here.

Character: Probably the single most important. Reason, Good Character will try to do what is right regardless of personal consequences. Bad character will tell you what you want to hear, but no promises on actual execution.

Experience: Best is experience in two factors, Executive and Holding a Real Job.

Executive Examples: Governor, Mayor, CEO, Military Officer etc. Senate or House don't count

Real Job: Business Owner, Assembly line worker, firefighter, military, police, doctor, electrician etc. Lawyers & Accountants don't count...elected Representatives don't count & Beauracrats don't count.

Once I screen out the unqualified...then I rank order the remainder, THEN I start looking at the long-term vision. Vision being of such character that you are willing to institute something that may cause you great pain while getting it off the ground and that may never even come to fruition in your lifetime...having the cojones to buck the polls. Examples of Vision:

Jefferson & the Westward Expansion

Roosevelt & the New Deal

Eisenhower & the Interstate System

Kennedy & the Space Program

Based on these criteria, the most qualified candidates are already out of the race...Huckabee, Romney etc (Governors/Executive Experience/leadership)

If I had to rank the remainder still in:

3. Clinton: Bad Character (Lies) ; No Experience (Senate doesn't Count); Has vision (I Just don't care for it).

2. Obama, Unknown Character (Wright issue may be the tip of the iceberg...or just a bunch of BS); No Experience (Again Senate Doesn't Count)

1. McCain, Awesome Character (Based purely on my belief that undergoing a beating at the hands of our enemy for several years and still keeping the faith...nothing more for me to say); Experience: Credit for being being a Military officer during wartime (small credit & NO Credit for Senate time); Vision: Unknown.

This is just a method I use...Based on this, I see no real "stellar" performers.

Feel free to launch rockets now. :-)

Regards,

Mike

"When did leading the greatest nation on the planet become a popularity contest?"

In a democracy if the President is unable or unwilling to persuade a majority that he is pursuing the right policies, he isn't doing his job. Of course Pres. Bush would have a really, really hard time persuading the public he is pursuing the right policies since he demonstrably is not.