Mere Personality

Here’s the thing: All four of them are qualified. All four of them, if landed in the hot seat, would do just as well as, possibly better than, the average of the forty three who went before.

The heat’s on Sarah right now. She’s not typical; she’s not safe. She doesn’t look like the others who went before. And she’s polarizing because she believes in things that people who believe in things either agree with passionately, or disagree with passionately. For my part, I stand with some of those things but not most of the others and I don’t care. She’s not the demagogue some on the left paint her as (check your facts, people), and our political system corrects for radicalism anyway. No worries.

The heat was on Barrack before and will continue. The right keeps on hysterically questioning his origins, his religious sensibilities, his commitment to good old fashioned Americanism. It’s all a bunch of panicky hogwash. Barry’s biography is emblematic of the sort of personality we like to read about in Presidential histories. He doesn’t have a lot of depth dealing with foreign policy issues but frankly, I don’t care anymore. Why not? Because just as in Bush’s first term, the next President’s first term will include events no one could have prepared for, and foreign policy “experience” (of which W had none anyway) will count for far less than guts and smarts and adaptability. Barrack fits the requirement.

No point commenting on John and Joe. They’re a pair of highly qualified old white guys from Washington.

So my point is I’m pretty much done with all the talk, the hand-wringing, the histrionics over this thing.