Suppose that when you wake up tomorrow morning, in addition to your regular personal responsibilities, the entire country depends on you to also take care of these things:
The economy: It is your job to reduce the increased inflation that is harming families; to grow jobs; to solve the supply problems that are leaving store shelves empty; and to make sure Social Security remains solvent for future generations.
Foreign Affairs: It is your job to make sure that the United States maintains its prominent place among the nations of the world; to face up to the threats of war from Russia; to overcome the economic challenges of the growing power of China; and to reduce hunger.
Disease: It is your job to cure Covid. And by the way, maybe cancer, too.
Environment: It is your job to make sure that planet survives.
Domestic Affairs: It is your job to confront endemic racism; to stand in the way of those who would reduce voting rights; and to reduce poverty.
The Economy: It is your job to reduce the increased inflation that is harming families; to grow jobs; to solve the supply problems that are leaving store shelves empty; and to make sure Social Security remains solvent for future generations.
Foreign Affairs: It is your job to make sure that the United States maintains its prominent place in the world; to face up to threats of war from Russia; to overcome the economic challenges of the growing power of China; and to reduce hunger.
Environment: It is your job to make sure that planet survives.
And, oh, yeah. If you feel like it, you can start a nuclear war and destroy the planet.
I seriously doubt that any sane human being would want that to be what they face when their alarm clock goes off. However, that is precisely what the President of the United States faces every morning.
Who in their right mind would want that job? No one. So, as we now work on the reform of the voting laws, I propose this particular reform – that no one who wants to be the President of the United States should be allowed to be.
The Founding Fathers saw no need to say that sanity should be a Presidential qualification, and so it isn’t. If you doubt that, I have two words for you – “Donald Trump.” But why shouldn’t it be? The only limits in the Constitution are that a President must be a natural born citizen and be thirty-five years old. How many thirty-five-year-old natural born citizens do you know who are as crazy as a loon? (By the way, why are loons considered crazy? Talk about stereotypes!)
So, now we hardly have enough limitations on who should be able to hold all of those previously mentioned, life or death, profound responsibilities. If you had been sitting with all those old white guys when they wrote the Constitution, wouldn’t you have suggested that maybe, just maybe, Presidents should be sane?
That gets me to the next point. What should be the standard for determining sanity? The courts have one. Doctors have one or more. Everyone growing up has their own, and their parents never meet it. I propose just one very simple standard. Again, given the insurmountable problems a President has to face – anyone who says that they want to bring those problems upon themselves, should not only be disqualified, but should immediately be sent for treatment.
Look at all the advantages this would bring to us. Beyond the obvious that only sane people would lead us, think of all the other benefits that this rule would provide. We would be able to do away with all of that campaign bullshit. Just imagine life without Presidential campaign commercials. Oh, sure, there will be people who will still want to plaster their faces in front of us to tell us how wonderful they are. We can’t stop that. But, if those lunatics say a single thing that could be interpreted as inferring that their interest is in becoming President, they will be out. In order to enforce this, I propose that whenever that happens, the violator be removed from any position of government that they then hold.
So, who then will run for President, you may ask? Who will we ever be able to vote for? These are obvious questions, but there are also obvious answers. We will be able to vote for anybody who has not said that they want to be voted for. Of course, this may lead to as many as one-hundred million or more people getting votes, but what could be more democratic? What could be less subject to the political party control that we now are oppressed by and that the very same Founding Fathers never wanted? The person with the most votes becomes President. Never again will we have to say, “I voted for the lesser of two evils.”
Those cynics among you will immediately say (if you talk to your computer) that this is a totally irrational system; that it will lead to our country being potentially led by someone without any of the skills necessary to deal with the responsibilities that a President must carry; that any proponent of such a system is himself the very kind of lunatic that he seeks to depose. I will answer that in the most generous way possible – Maybe I’m wrong. Sue me.
We were right 