Inspired by Bone’s thread. Imagine if you could choose the next US President, but your only choices were:
1). Donald Trump.
2). An eligible US citizen picked entirely at random.
Which would you go for? To make it easier, you’re allowed to assume that the random citizen isn’t mentally ill, or really old, or suffering from any debilitating disease which would make it hard to serve the full term. Apart from that, you can’t make any assumptions. The random could be a college professor, or he could be a Klansman.
There was meant to be a poll attached to this thread but the server farted and the thread posted before I could set it up.
FTR: I’d go with Trump, purely because I just think better the devil you know. Another Trump term would be terrible, but the random citizen could be so much worse that I can’t justify the risk.
Honestly? The average Joe has an excellent shot with me.
The President is much more than one person; he has people to advise, assist, and facilitate his leadership. If average Joe beat Trump, there’d be a lot of capable people raising their hands to help him/her.
Definitely an eligible US citizen picked at random.
I’d pick a randomly selected convicted felon with a psychiatric track record over Donald Trump, too.
I’d pick a randomly selected convicted felon Republican politician who has a high approval rate from Republican registered voters over Donald Trump, even.
Tough choice, but I’d go with Trump. The average Joe American has some pretty shockingly naive or ignorant views. I’ve heard average Joes say that America ought to save money by abolishing its military and keeping only a few hundred nukes and use those nukes when a conflict arises. I’ve heard average Joes say that the population of the U.S. is 1 billion people. There are average Joes who think that school teachers and NFL players ought to be paid the same amount. Go read the average comment section of a CNN or Fox News story on Facebook. Sift through those hundreds of comments and ask if you would be confident in the fate of the United States being decided by one of those commenters selected at random.
At least, at this point, Trump has 2.5 years of experience as a president, has knowledge of world affairs, and so forth.
Bear in mind also that there’s a roughly 1 in 3 chance that the average American you pick from the lottery draw will be a Trump supporter, and if you think Trump is too divergent from your views for your taste, you haven’t seen what many of his supporters are like.
Also, we should remember that the average person usually has only some faults. Trump has an extensive list of them, which makes him unusually unfit:[ul]
[li]Purely self-serving[/li][li]Thoroughly dishonest[/li][li]Thieving[/li][li]Spoiled[/li][li]Unteachable [/li][li]Ignorant[/li][li]Mentally lazy[/li][li]Physically lazy[/li][li]Incapable of empathy[/li][li]Loud-mouthed[/li][li]Racist[/li][li]Ethno-nationalist[/li][li]Sexist[/li][li]Lacking in taste[/li][li]Verbally repetitive[/li][li]Insecure[/li][li]Narcissist[/li][li]Unimaginative[/li][li]Incompetent[/li][/ul]The average person rarely achieves all of these.
By definition the average Joe (and include Josie in all that follows) is average. Average would be several heads and shoulders above Trump.
The average Joe is usually pretty honest and well intended. They return wallets with money in them, for example. They are not the sort of people who would grab someone else’s private parts without permission, let alone brag about it.
The average Joe would have good odds of NOT being a Far Rightist as more Americans are D and D leaning than R and R leaning, not even counting that of Rs and R leaning adults not all are as far into crazy batshit range even when they lean rightward.
The average Joe would be less into the partisan game as into seeing that some actual work gets done.
The average Joe put into that circumstance would know they are an average Joe, more or less, and would build a team of centrist expert advisors and actually fairly commonly take their advice.
Maybe I confused things by saying ‘Regular Joe’ instead of ‘Random citizen’. You could end up with President Richard Spencer or President Wannabe Jihadi. It’s very unlikely, but if you roll the dice you could get someone who makes Trump look like Abraham Lincoln.
No contest. The average Joe. Yes, we could get another moron, but the odds are against that. And if we did get another asshole like Trump, I don’t see him having the support that Trump does.
There would also be a plus to the average Joe. I think that most would have the smarts to accept advice when they find themselves completely and totally in over their head.
The odds of getting someone worse than Trump don’t come up on a roll of the dice or even one card out of a deck. Odds are way overwhelming that random Joe/Josephine would be better and just as good that they be the best ever as being worse than what we’ve got. Worse than Trump is a very small population in this country.
Would even an overt neo-Nazi or a Jihadist be functionally worse than Trump?
I don’t think so. Really. Checks and balances would work there. They fail us to a significant degree now because Trump is not quite that overt and due to partisanship that would not apply in a random selection. As mentioned by enipla, they wouldn’t have the support that makes Trump of such harm.
I swear I’ve been meaning to ask this question for like a year. I’d take average Joe in a heartbeat, mainly because they’d be more willing to listen to (and be able to be controlled by) his/her advisors.
The dude literally never heard of Nepal (or Bhutan, but that’s slightly more forgivable). In a briefing he pointed to Nepal on a map, giggled and said "What’s the hell is “nipple?”. He also pronounced Bhutan “button.”. And his lack of understanding on trade and complete inability to be taught it, yet still go against almost every advisor makes a random person a much better choice. Most people know they don’t know something. Trump thinks he knows everything but knows almost nothing.
Electing an average joe would be the equivalent of handing over the government to the most conniving bureaucrats and operatives, so there is no surprise the authoritarian statists of the SDMB would choose this option. Even Trump’s hard-headedness is no match for his advisors who have basically convinced him to do a 180 on things like defunding NATO, furthering detente with Russia, and withdrawing from the wars.
The average joe would need to be strong-willed, knowledgeable, and moral. Unfortunately the only moral option for a person like this is to turn down the presidency. The problem is the presidency itself, not so much who is president.
That last bit is key. Trump isn’t very good at much, but he’s a motherfucker for whipping up a mob. If we got some other racist dumbass in the White House, they’d almost certainly not have Trump’s singular mobwhipping talent. As a result, Republicans wouldn’t be so terrified of gainsaying him, and the executive branch could be put back in control.