In the soporific news of the month, the painfully boring discussions of whether Fiorina was a good CEO keep raging on.
The point of these debates eludes me entirely. Let’s say she was the best CEO known to humanity. So what? How would that make her more qualified to perform an entirely different set of duties?
By participating in the debates as to whether Fiorina was a good CEO or Carson a good doctor, we are allowing the congenitally stupid among our compatriots to define the terms of discussion and colonize the public space. We are letting the most lost and confused among us have an impact that they do not deserve to have.
The problem with Fiorina, Trump and Carson is not how well or how badly they performed in their professions. The problem is that, politically, they are rank, arrogant amateurs who can only appeal to those who are too intellectually limited to understand the complexities of the modern world.
Remember, the moment you let somebody else define the terms of the conversation, you are halfway down the road to losing.
Clarissa's Blog 
Well, how would you describe a one-term senator from Illinois who actually managed to get elected President twice, and is now playing commander-in-chief of the Free Word while it crumbles into rubble in his incompetent hands?
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A career politician, what else? Obama is bored with foreign affairs, that’s a fact. But he took a collapsing economy and turned it around very fast and very effectively. That’s a huge achievement. Nobody else among the world leaders managed to do that with this global economic crisis except for Canada’s Harper.
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If the economy is doing so well, why is Wall Street in a panic? Have you checked the Dow Jones average lately?
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I have checked my bank account, and compared with 2009 it’s doing amazing. 🙂
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The average is well above what it was when GWB left office:
http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/101314/where-was-dow-jones-when-obama-took-office.asp
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But the interest you’re getting from it is hovering at just above zero, when it should be paying at least 5-6%.
If you want to criticize an intelligent woman, skip Carly Fiorina and go after Janet Yellen, who just refused to throw out a life jacket to the stock market.
Yes, my investments have also fully recovered from the Great Recession, but they can’t keep dog-paddling forever. 🙂
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From my detached point of view and all the sources I look at I get the idea that the US is in a Ralph Kramden economy dominated by get-rich-quick schemes (aka bubbles). They can provide some shiny trinkets for people here and there but they inevitably collapse.
And what about derivatives, everything I’ve heard points to the idea that if the derivative bubble pops then it will make 2008 look like no big deal…
It’s impossible to build a sound economy based on people selling sophisticated financial instruments to each other and there doens’t seem to be a lot else going on.
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It is also worth bearing in mind that there is no starter job for President of the US. It’s not like any other political position in the country and so there’s no presidential track.
A few years ago the conventional CW was that governors of large states were a good pool for candidates but W kind of ruined that idea.
Effective and ineffective presidents have come from a number of different backgrounds so it’s …. tough to predict who would be a good president.
The biggest problem is of course that the system as it currently stands selects for a good campaigner while the abilities needed to do a good job as president are completely separate. You might get lucky once in a while and find someone who’s both a good campaigner and a good administrator (Clinton the first) that’s not the usual case.
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“… politically, they are rank, arrogant amateurs who can only appeal to those who are too intellectually limited to understand the complexities of the modern world.”
Which of course means that they are shrewd judges of character when it comes to the model American voter — easy to please, hoping for emotional engagement, shorn of the world’s complexities to the point that they may be pulled over the eyes as a form of fleece …
They haven’t misunderstood the baseness of character, and they haven’t failed to present the model American voter with a desired view in kind.
Insofar as the illusion of character goes, it’s now considerably less about professing “commonweal” and more about accepting “realpolitik” — this is especially true of the American Right, which long ago accepted the views of Leo Strauss along with the then-prevailing Chicago School, at least before it started its current journey on the path of economic neo-liberalism …
I figured that as a fan of Freud, you might have sussed this anyway: the patron saint of American elections may as well be his nephew, Edward Bernays.
On a somewhat related yet unrelated note, you realise that the reason I nudged you toward the Wellcome Library in London is that they have a large collection on sexology, and as a resource it might have made a more interesting visit than the Freud Museum itself?
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Amateurs are important. In the beginning of his career, Einstein was an amateur physicist. He accomplished so much he was able to become a professional.
While an amateur physicist, Einstein was a patent office clerk.
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And in the beginning of our lives, we were all naked. That doesn’t mean we should arrive at work undressed. 🙂
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And in the beginning of our lives, we were all naked. That doesn’t mean we should arrive at work undressed.
OK, I am confused. What does this have to do with my comment?
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Being a president can’t be a beginning of a career. It has to be a culmination.
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In practice, it isn’t that either, but instead the experience works as an insta-filled CV for certain types of diplomatic jobs where boat loads of gravitas are required.
If you believe a certain candidate will be a horrible leader, imagine how that candidate will behave once they’re free of that responsibility and able to work as a “taste maker” for quangos, corporate interests, and the odd pariah state or two …
Actually, I don’t have to imagine anything: I just offered an accurate description of a former Prime Minister.
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