Pick up today’s newspapers and you’ll see a dozen reasons why no sane person should want to be president.
Every morning someone from the CIA or some agency comes in to tell the president, along with his eggs and toast, what went wrong with the world in the preceding 10 hours or so.
Today, for example, I suspect he would have been told:
• Ukraine could go either way.
• Russian troops, tanks and heavy equipment are in the Ukraine, which they of course deny.
• No one knows how far Putin is willing to go to get his empire back.
• We don’t know yet how far NATO, and frankly the U.S., are willing to go to stop him.
• Our military is, per usual, divided. So what do you want us to do?
• Syria is divided into umpteen camps. We don’t know who we want to back or where the aid should go. If we come down too hard on any particular faction the main beneficiary will probably be ISIL. So far only Jordan appears to want to join us aggressively in the battle, and most of our allies are just paying lip service. Our hawks are screaming for us to do more to somebody, and they don’t much care who, and the doves are screaming that it’s not our fight.”
Domestically:
• We can assure you that about 45%-47% of the American population totally supports what you’re doing. They can also assure you that 45%- 47% of the population totally hates your guts, and even if you got up and walked across the White House pool they would still believe you were a Muslim from Kenya with phony papers.
• Later this month a showdown is coming over the immigration actions enacted through your presidential powers. The Republicans are threatening to shut down the Department of Homeland Security. Political-savvy counselors may say the Republicans may have made a mistake and drawn a line in the sand in the wrong place. They will tell you to hang tough, make no deal, and the Republicans will either close down Homeland Security, which would look really bad, particularly if they have to furlough TSA employees and turn the airports into a morass. Additionally, they would look very unpatriotic, or they will have to back down and look like a bunch of wimps.
• What’s clear is that no matter what you, Mr. President, or any president decides to do, it will end up 45%-47% one way and 45%-47% the other way with the American population.
So, already knowing this is why it seems odd that some 16 Republicans want to take their shot at the brass ring. Most all of them are very seasoned politically, so they know the reality of hardball politics.
They’re going to comb through your life for anything you ever did or didn’t do, for every marriage or relationship that went sour, or every affair you had from grade school to the present.
They’re going through all your financial data, every bank account, every tax return, every investment with a fine-tooth comb and not just you, but your wife, your children and your supporters.
They’ll be going through all your medical records, insurance records, anything about your mental health, domestic disputes, sexual problems, your kids with problems like alcohol or drugs. About the only thing possibly off the table is if someone is gay.
Anyone in a political campaign knows that it is terribly difficult on marriages and the candidates’ children. It strains every relationship they ever had and leads to all sorts of betrayals, some small, some large.
But the Siren song of being No. 45 is too strong, too overwhelming, and the chance to add your name to that hallowed list beginning with Washington, through Lincoln, to today is more than anyone can resist. So to the 13 or 16 candidates who are already on the list, good luck, but you can’t say you weren’t warned.