I’m a bit young but if I could pick anyone the first name would be me.
Jon Stewart. Especially because he wouldn’t want to.
I wrote in Rudy Giuliani in 2008 (with Joe Lieberman as his veep) and in 2012 I wrote in John Huntsman and Olympia Snow. I still agree with myself.
As far as people who could genuinely be good Presidents, there are a lot of people who can do the job. 99% of them are unexciting, and the public demands excitement. The interesting people generally suck at everything except being interesting.
Robert Gates was a good one. David Gergen. Pretty much anyone who has ever been a good chief of staff, like Erskine Bowles. We had a guy down here in Florida named Bob Butterworth who was so talented that he improved a perennially awful organization, Florida’s DCF. Put him on the VA and if he succeeds, make him President by acclamation.
As far as elected politicians with a national profile, there’s also a ton: Bill Richardson, John Engler, Charlie Crist, John Kasich, John Huntsman, Phil Bredesen, Jerry Brown, Mitch Daniels, Joe Biden, Jim Gilmore(yes, Jim Gilmore would be a fine President despite winning like 32 votes in two runs), Mark Warner, Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, Tim Kaine, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Charles Schumer, Al Franken, and that’s just off the top of my head.
And you know what’s “disqualified” these candidates? Age, height, “old news”, “boring”, too moderate.
As for businessman candidates, I don’t think Trump actually qualifies. He doesn’t seem like a traditional CEO. I suspect that if he hadn’t been born rich, he’d currently be selling used cars or real estate, rather than running a company.
As far as the OP goes, how about Grover Cleveland?
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Brian Schweitzer, Jim Webb, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Marcy Kaptur, David Bonior, Stephen Lynch
Schweitzer I agree with for sure. Forgot him on my list. Many of those others have no demonstrated competence, they just have views you agree with, with has nothing to do with actual ability.
Sherrod Brown. Colin Powell. James Mattis.
Sherrod Brown is a career legislator. He’s never run anything, no military experience, no business experience. Meanwhile, serving right with him is Rob Portman, a guy with a sterling resume.
The history of the US shows us that resume and experience are pretty much meaningless, at least in terms of who makes the best president. There’s no correlation whatsoever between executive experience and being a better or worse president.
That’s not quite true, but there’s no way to absolutely prove it. But one thing I know for sure is that the quality of a potential leader is not related to whether he or she agrees with me or not. Sherrod Brown and Liz Warren are perfect examples of Americans wanting excitement, in this case a candidate who seems to be perfect in their views to the left liberal eye. But by the same logic that resume doesn’t matter, there’s no evidence that Sherrod Brown or Liz Warren could do a better job than Susan Sarandon.
Moderation, something that tends to come with any leader who has actually governed successfully, is just so BORING, which is why I guess we don’t elect governors anymore.
We elected a governor in 2000 and he was terrible – one of the worst presidents ever. The one we elected in '92 was decent. We elected someone in '88 with no executive experience and he was actually a reasonable pragmatist. I’m sure we’ll disagree on '80 and perhaps '76, but whichever one of us you ask, those governors probably have a pretty mixed record as President. We could keep going back, and we’d see that ex-governor Presidents are no better (and probably no worse) on average than ex-Senators/other. Issues do matter, but they’re not all that matter – temperament matters too, a great deal.
Not every governor is good. We didn’t elect GWB because he was a governor, we elected him because he was a Bush. Clinton was an excellent President, and Bush 41 was also quite good and had a deep background in foreign policy and national security, so predictably he was a good foreign policy President and weak on domestic policy.
There are many kinds of experience. One can learn leadership running a federal agency, a state, a city, serving in the military, running a business. Although being a legislator isn’t really that kind of experience, it’s also very useful if the person was a very influential legislator. LBJ sucked at foreign policy, but no one was ever better at getting legislation passed.
Experience does actually matter, you just have to know how to review someone’s record. People actually do perform fairly predictably in office, with all the strengths and weaknesses you’d expect based on what they’ve done before.
I’ll at least agree with this part. As for the rest… to whatever degree experience matters, Kasich (and other “experienced” Republicans you’ve mentioned) would still be a terrible president, because he’d do terrible things (even if he did those terrible things “well”) – an incompetent Democrat would be better, even if they were incompetent, since they wouldn’t do those terrible things (e.g. start a war, appoint SC justices that outlaw abortion and otherwise take action to restrict women’s bodily autonomy, etc.).
How about Joe Biden? I think he’d be excellent.
If you prioritize such issues over basic competence, that’s your right, but if we assume candidates agree, I’d hope you’d look at competence as an important way to differentiate. For example, if the next Presidential race features Sherrod Brown and Martin O’Malley as the top two, one is clearly superior and there isn’t too much daylight between them on the issues. A lot of people will prefer Brown because he’s the progressive hero, but O’Malley is just as much a progressive hero, his record just got “sullied” by the necessity of actually having to govern.
I’m not American, but if I were, and if she were still alive, in good health and conversant with current events, I’d vote for Eleanor Roosevelt.
Sure, though I don’t necessarily agree on the way you evaluate experience. I’d have to look at both their records in detail to decide, were they the candidates. I’d happily support either against any Republican.
Of course, but I used those as extreme examples. O’Malley has 16 years of executive experience with major accomplishments and innovations in governance under his belt. Sherrod Brown has been a legislator distinguished only by the fact that he votes a lot like Bernie Sanders and thus has a fan base. He’s purer than O’Malley, but that’s only because he’s never had to actually govern.
I’m not even close to convinced. Obama, IMO, has been (for most things) just as good and effective, and probably more so on some issues, than Bill Clinton. Obama’s foreign policy judgment has been far better, IMO (along with his personal discipline, obviously). Clinton was better at some things, like selling and building on his own accomplishments. And they’re probably as close to each other on the issues as Brown and O’Malley.
You probably disagree on Obama and Clinton, but those are matters of opinion. So I utterly reject any assertion that executive experience is superior to other forms of experience. Sometimes it might be, but not always.