Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Unprepared - Not What I'm Looking For in a President

Donald Trump bloviated for an hour or so, and the talking heads agreed it was good political theater. There was nothing of substance, but there was a lot of us against them

Politicians are bad.  Everyone in the stadium is good.  There are so many of us here and we are so happy to be here.  The world is going to hell in a hand basket, because I was not there to save it. Once I have the power, though, things will be different.  

I'm going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it.  I'll name it after ME.

When he lost his train of thought, he turned to those seated behind him and took pleasure in their applause.  Turning around, the bigger crowd not to be undone, cheered even louder.  Then he started over again.

It was stream of consciousness.  It was not prepared.  That worries me.

I want a President who thinks that the words she shares are valuable. I want a thoughtful communicator.  

I watched a rabble rouser, an Elmer Gantry, in Alabama last week.  He took the measure of the crowd, and played it like a fiddle.  He's preaching to the choir, and that's fine if that's all it is.  But the rest of the clown car can't seem to gain traction; I've heard Jeff Flake, Arizona's Republican junior Senator, more this week than I've heard Jeb Bush.  

When I'm looking at Jeff Flake as a voice of reason, you know something there's a bad moon rising.

And then there's Bernie Sanders.  

BlackLivesMatter is more than a hashtag these days, and it was last month when he blew an opportunity to connect with a piece of the voting public he will surely need to move forward with his campaign.  His rally on Social Security was disrupted, and he dismissed the invaders by telling them that they were off the topic.

I wish that he had been prepared to answer the issues that BlackLivesMatter raises.  I wish that someone on his staff had thought - or been tasked to think - about the marginalization of people of color, of the divergence in police tactics when race is considered, about the disconnect felt by those kids in Ferguson whose high school is unaccredited and whose school board doesn't seem to care.  

Instead, he was left stumbling and bumbling and annoyed.  He was unprepared.

The Presidency is a big job.  You have to be able to keep all those balls in the air while standing on one leg and whistling.  You can't do all that if you are unprepared.

Now, Hillary, she's prepared.  I just don't trust her..... and trust comes before prepared in what I'm looking for in a President.

It's going to be a long time til November, 2016.

3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. If he should win the nomination, Bernie has to get the vote of the middle to be President. He already has the vote of the left. If the blacks don't vote for him, they aren't playing attention because there is not a right wing candidate out there who won't make their lives worse. Do they want to go to war anymore than the rest of us? But if Bernie placates them, he will show himself as weaker than if he does what he did. Black Lives Matter is a group who have taken on the cause and are doing it with violent means-- which I call seizing a microphone and blocking a freeway. It reminds me of Occupy. It doesn't win elections. It wins news time and it won't help Bernie one bit if he placates them. What these groups need to do is win elections and approach candidates in ways that will help not just get news time. The two who did this have pushed out a black, Seattle woman actually putting forth the information on police abuses. They are after becoming stars in their own minds and they don't care how they do it or who they hurt on the way. I don't believe such tactics win voters in the end. I have heard some suspicion that Al Sharpton is behind it as a way to help Hillary. They didn't get a chance to take over her microphone and when they addressed her after her speech, not during it, but she wasn't as responsive as they wanted.

    Yes, we have a policing problem that we didn't know about until a few years ago. We also though have a problem of black behavior that has led to some of this. It's not all one-sided for what's gone wrong. And the more I read the paper of all the incidents, those that suit the BLM agenda and those that don't, I see it as a serious concern. It isn't helped though by grabbing microphones and it isn't helped by ignoring the reasons some of these cop to black shootings happened.

    If we want genuine change, I think Sanders is the only answer for the left. Not sure who it is on the right :(. If Biden gets in, I'll have to reconsider that statement for the left. As I agree-- we know who Hillary is and that's the problem.
    (I deleted the comment the first time when I had a typo that totally changed the meaning of one sentence)

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  3. Al Sharpton and Hillary.... Bill Clinton and Donald Trump..... I believe it all and I hate it all.

    There are questions you raise which are fodder for another post, Rain. Thanks for weighing in... the conversation needs to be had.

    Watched clips of Joe Biden on CNN today.... hmmmmmmmmm
    a/b

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