While this premise is obviously inspired by recent events the two candidates described aren’t direct Clinton/Trump analogues so it would be nice of it wasn’t the 10’000th 2016 election re-run thread.
That said, in 2024 America is faced with the choice of two presidential candidates, Jack and James (both male only because I don’t want gender to be a factor in the decision, feel free to think of them as both female if you wish).
Jack has a long and distinguished career already behind him in several different fields, by all accounts he is an outstanding leader and has proven capable and competent in everything he has turned his hand to, which includes previous political experience. He is also an awful human being with pretty much every negative characteristic you could think of, despite this he has apparently stayed on the right side of the law and its unlikely to cause any difficulties in his presidency. Basically as a private individual he is a terrible specimen of humanity but if elected its almost certain he will improve things both domestically in the USA and globally.
James has a long career behind him in several different fields, by all accounts he is a mediocre leader at best and has left a trail of problems behind him due to incompetency, he has got as far as he has mostly because he’s a really great person, kind, generous, likable, basically every positive characteristic you could think of. As a private individual he is a shining example of humanity but if elected its likely his presidency will prove problematic at best and given his record most likely result in a poor outcome for the USA both domestically and globally.
Leaving political parties aside and assuming that both if elected would implement policies acceptable to you which would you chose and why?
I voted for James. Sorry, but an awful, terrible person is likely to do awful, terrible things with such massive power at their command. And the US did fine with mediocre leaders before.
Voting Third Party in this question would be a cop out to the scenario.
I voted awful but competent, keeping very much in mind that this awful person will hew to policies I like. Which incidentally means he’s almost certainly not a racist or a paid puppet of big business or foreign governments, because those types of awful would doubtlessly leak into his policies.
How exactly can you be a great leader enacting great policies and leading your organization to greatness if you have every negative characteristic you can think of? How do you think leadership works?
Yeah yeah, I get it. “What if Trump was a liberal, you’d support him even though he’s a scumbag, right?”
Except Trump, while a terrible person, is also a terrible leader. He’s damaging the conservative brand and the conservative movement. He shoots himself in the foot all the time with unforced errors. There ain’t no 4 dimensional chess going on here where he distracts you with his Twitter feed so you’re to busy to stop him from Making America Great Again.
Or maybe you’re thinking of a guy like Lyndon Johnson, who was a petty bully, but he knew how to twist arms to get legislation passed? Yeah, and he was unpopular enough that he decided not to run for his second term and bungled us into the Vietnam War. OK, he got civil rights laws passed. But his record is not that of a great leader with horrible flaws, his record is mixed.
Or there’s the whole murderous bastard leader, your Genghis Khan types. Except Genghis Khan wasn’t considered a despicable person by his Mongol supporters, they thought he was great. Yeah, millions of people died because of his conquests, but that didn’t make him a horrible person according to the Mongols.
So what exactly are we talking about here? A sociopath who molests puppies but hides it all behind a facade of good works, all so he can rape puppies with impunity in private? A Jimmy Savile type? The problem with supporting such a person is what happens if they get exposed? The president has been raping little boys in the Oval Office, what happens to his party, his policies, the people who covered up for him?
Honestly, for the guy to be competent leader that supports liberal policies with some hope of not being promptly impeached he can’t really be all that bad - if he was bad in this or that or that way he wouldn’t be liberal, and if he was bad in this or that or that way he wouldn’t last a month.
Also, to be able to be effective at passing legislation in this political environment, he has to either have the power of mind control or a habit of kidnapping and holding republican politicians’ families hostage. Which probably would qualify him as awful.
Its short-hand to prevent having to write a multi-page treatise for a simple thread. Your response is a good example of why I don’t post much on here anymore, what’s supposed to be a hopefully thought-provoking thread with interesting debate is met with needless hostility and aggression.
And for the record I’m not American so I have no particular dog in the Clinton/Trump fight.
That’s pretty much exactly what happened in 1968 and 1972. Even in 1968 no one thought Nixon was any kind of choir boy, while Hubert Humphrey was beloved and George McGovern was a war hero and (literally) an Eagle Scout (Humphrey settled for being a Life Scout and Scoutmaster.)
“Awful person” is way too subjective to be meaningful. I considered Reagan to be an awful person and a sucky leader, but many people do not agree with me on one or both of those points.
