Thursday, January 11, 2018

If Oprah Winfrey Isn't President Material, Who Is?

If Oprah Winfrey isn't qualified to
be president, then no one is.
I've tried for a few days to listen objectively and understand the views of many people that I respect as it relates to the conversation of Oprah Winfrey running for president, but I simply can not bite my tongue on this topic any longer as a deep divide is building between those who say she can and those who think it's over her head.

Either too many of us are lost in the sauce and simply can't look back at history to determine the ingredients of a good president, or too many of you skeptics have grown weary of Donald Trump's act and simply haven't done the same thing.

Sure, it may seem reasonable for people that are in politics to actually aspire towards them and to chase after a Political Science or Law degree along the way despite knowing of those who arrived in the realm of politics after traversing various non-traditional pathways. Ronald Reagan is fairly famous as an actor turned president, but Reagan is also credited for several years as a Governor before taking on the bigger role.

Apparently, Governors are great options for future presidents even though the history of Governors who have done it is no more or less flattering than the history of former Senators turned president or any other professional person who pursued politics later in life. The notion that Colorado saloon owner, John Hickenlooper, is now a worthy presidential candidate begs the question of what made him worthy to be Governor?

I know, I know. Hickenlooper was the mayor of Denver before becoming the Governor of Colorado, but what exactly made that saloon owner worthy of running a city as booming as Denver was? How could a business owner truly understand the complexities of local government given the complex nature of running any city in America? Nothing we learn in civics gave us the nuances of local government that are much more complex and varying than the simple framework of our nations Constitution.

And what about my dear friend Senator Rhonda Fields, also of Colorado? She became a member of the state House of Representatives before winning her Senate seat on the back of grief and being the champion for her late son Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiance, Vivian Wolfe, who were both murdered by gang members as they prepared to testify to a gang murder they witnessed. 

What made Rhonda worthy of such a serious and important job that she had ZERO experience with?

Her heart.

In reality, the only thing that any person who has ever succeeded in the role of the president ever really brought to the table was an undying love for this beautiful country of ours.  I fashion my statement that way to clarify between those who succeeded and those who failed at being the president.

I- and apparently a whole lot of other people- am not particularly interested in what a politician offers up as his or her list of qualifications as much as I am interested in why it is they want the job. The recent firestorm over the book "Fire and Fury" makes us further question whether Trump really wanted this job, although he won it by letting us all know that he wanted this job so he could Make America Great Again. I'm not exactly sure if I know why Hillary wanted the job. It could be my clouded memory or her foggy message.

If my memory is still useful, Barack Obama was considered the totally unqualified community organizer who hadn't served as a committee chair in the Senate before being pegged as "next up" on the back of his rousing DNC convention speech in 2004.

Once again, a rousing speaker has roused the masses into looking at her and saying to themselves, "now that lady could be our president". We did it to Michelle Obama and if my now overworked memory serves me right again, we did it to a very cool and dignified Hillary Clinton who handled her husband's infidelity crap in a way that made us see her in a presidential light. Did raising Bill and Chelsea actually make her worthy of a Senate seat in New York? Of course, it didn't. In fact, the Senate and Secretary of State thing were both positions of an unqualified person who was hoping to remove that stigma en route to a return visit to the White House.  Hillary killed those jobs she was previously unqualified for, so much so that the GOP needed to tag Benghazi to her and not the sitting president just to taint her record a bit.

The unifying aspect of every leader from Mayor to President that actually does the job well- and I'm not really interested in a conversation about electing more qualified hustlers to hustle us after we elect them- is that they were probably asked to lead, just like Oprah was, and they probably said yes because they love this country and would do anything to see it thrive including taking down of an orange baffoon if America needed her to answer that call.
Why do we blame the entertainers for being more believable
then the politicians we elect to deceive us over and over?

Now! If Oprah is no longer qualified to be president based on the merits of everything that I've just said.....no one is.

No really!! 

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