Do We Really Know What We Want In A President?

Throughout this entire election season, I have heard, time and time again, how many people are ready to just chuck the whole field into the river. “There’s just no one good in the race this year.” Or “They both are horrible, the better of who cares.” or my favorite “I don’t want to elect a Republican or Democrat; I want to elect an American”.

Statements like these are inevitably followed by someone usually wondering where the great people of yesteryear are today. Where is this generations Lincoln, Washington, King, Kennedy, or Roosevelt? We quickly forget how none of those great leaders were considered great in their own time, and how this feeling we have about the national mood is really one of our own making.

Greatness is never really appreciated in its own time, but at the same time, it is usually bestowed on those who have a revisionist view on history. In school, we are taught about the greatness of Washington, as a war leader, while his achievements as President are usually glossed over. We forget that even as a war leader, George Washington was at best a mediocre military commander, who lost more battles than he won. He just happened to win the right ones (a prime example of the phrase “Lose the battle but win the war”)

The election of Lincoln caused the country to split in two. As a result, a bloody Civil War was fought, and would forever change the cultural landscape of the country. The war, and the disagreements were about more than slavery, or property, and Lincoln himself didn’t begin the war in a crusade to abolish slavery, much to the chagrin of many staunch abolitionists. Lincoln wanted to preserve the country, but when he realized the country needed to fundamentally change, he gave the country the guidance it needed to make those changes. It cost him enormous political clout and capital (which we forget today) and ultimately cost him his own life.

I mean really ask yourself if someone in a wheelchair could be elected President in today's political climate

Ask yourself, could a man like FDR or Lincoln be elected today? I remember talking with friends and reading my twitter feed during the debates and many people would obsess over Mitt Romney’s smirk, or Barack Obama’s frown, as if those were the only determining factors. Never mind what each of the candidates said or the substance of their positions. Their confidence, or charisma, real or imagined, seemed to sway the mood.

This was quickly followed by the hacks in the media who would also obsess over these minute details to the point of exhaustion and the public would eat up every word. We know more, demand perfection, and pounce on any flaw in the other side, and trumpet it from the mountaintops on and on, to the point where we’ve made the public cynical about the process. We act like every success or failure is a live or die situation that we forget that these are human beings, dedicated to an impossible task, trying to make the lives of all of us spectators in the stands better. We’ve made it a sport, at the expense of our own realities.

Neither Mitt Romney, or Barack Obama will fundamentally change the American landscape, as others before have done, and none of them alone could have done it. Lincoln, FDR, and Washington all had success in military campaigns to help them, as did JFK. Lyndon Johnson and Nixon, by contrast did not, and are considered inferior today, in spite of Johnson passing the civil rights act and Nixon opening up trade with China (both of which continue to be major forces determining American life as we know it today)

We bought into this news cycle, we obsess over the small details, and we pick and prod our candidates to the point where they are no longer human, but rather competing robots looking for the slightest edge. The reason we think no one good exists any more, is because we make more out of the flaws, and the character based on those flaws rather than the greatness that lies beneath.

I encourage all to vote next week, for whomever you wish. The fact remains that history is made by those who show up, and not by those who sit out. There are two major candidates (among others no doubt) both of which are true Americans, and both are excellent choices for the office of President of the United States. However, understand that no one looks like Lincoln, JFK, FDR, or Washington when they come in the door. Only after they are gone can we really appreciate what they were able to achieve.