December 4, 2007
Choices
A talk show panel host asked presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin about what might be the characteristics of a good president. She listed seven: Withstand adversity, accept diverse perspectives, loyalty, admit mistakes, manage emotions, define goals, and ability to relax.
A friend of mine is writing a book on presidential leadership skills from JFK to W. He says they run all the way from a lot to some to none. He did not go into any further detail with me. Neither did he say what sort of discernment and assessment capacities one might expect to be necessary from the electorate in choosing such a president.
Given the state of our public education systems, the apparent curricular preferences for vocational training over education, and the dropout rates before finishing high school, it’s no wonder the choices we make. If a voter has no knowledge of the humanities and all they entail as a whole, either his own or that of the nation and the world, hence little way of discerning or anticipating the effect of our nation’s leadership’s judgment on his or her general well-being and security, then how can we expect intelligent choices in the polling booth?
Pretty soon, Ms Goodwin’s criteria, so often missing in the electorate, will inevitably be missing or not even sought for in the candidates for the several public offices essential for our leadership. Or, put another way, if we can’t manage our own perspectives any better than we’ve been prepared so to do, how can we expect the United Nations to work? Pretty soon, we’ll not even know who belongs in or out of the Axis of Evil itself.
No Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos