Choosing a President

For many years, my position has been that anyone who has the hubris to actually want to be president bad enough to go through what you have to go through in order to get elected is, by definition, unhinged (sorry for tossing around the clinical jargon), and should be prohibited from holding the office.

I mean, think about it. Who has the temerity, to look at themselves in the mirror and with a straight face think to themselves...

"Out of every citizen of this country, I am the smartest, the most experienced, the wisest and the most qualified to be President of the United States of America and the Leader of the Free World. Me. Nobody else. Just me."

That's some fucking ego right there! Those are brass fucking balls (or tits...don't want to be sexist) of Biblical porportions!

I look at myself in the mirror and think

"How the fuck is it possible I lived to be 53 years old? Why am I not dead or in jail? Or dead in jail from a shankin'? How is it possible that I even manage to hold down a steady job and to raise a child?"

Aren't we all filled with self doubt? Don't we all feel like frauds and charlatans, hoping no one finds out what ignorant and incompotent fucktards we are?

You fucking liar! You do too!

Who looks at themselves and thinks "Yeah. I deserve to fly all over the world on Air Force fucking One and have control over the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. I can totally see myself doing that. I deserve that."

No, there is something wrong with all of these people.

What we need is a lottery made up of a pool of candidates who meet some basic intellectual qualifications. Here are my qualifications:

The first one is non-negotiable. You can't believe in this:



If you are not only CAPABLE of believing that but actually draw strength, solace, inspiration and direction from it, then I want the Secret Service to gun your ass down if you come within 5 fucking miles of the "nuclear football".

Faith is "belief without evidence". I don't want anyone in charge of this country who is able to reach a conclusion and make a decision without good, solid, researched, verifiable evidence.

No "gut feelings" or "I know it in my heart!" or "trust me" in the fucking White House, thank you very much! I want "It's a fact. Here's the proof. Go check it out yourself if you don't believe me. It's all there."

The second qualification is, don't be a dick.

The last is, understand the difference between being a leader and a bully.

That's pretty much it, really. If you can do those three things and meet the constitutional qualifications about age and citizenship, you name goes in the fucking pool, whether you want it to or not.

The President and Vice President would be chosen at random from this pool by drawing names out of a bucket.

Ideally, we would get an executive who, once in the White House, would do as good a job as they are capable of so that they could be released after 4 years and not required to serve ANOTHER 4 years fixing all the shit they broke.

If you research it, this was pretty much George Washington's attitude.



He knew he needed to accept the job. He knew it was the what the country wanted. He knew it was a sacrifice he had to make. But he couldn't wait to be rid of the burden and get back to being a regular citizen.

Harry Truman had the same point of view.



I like to think that this approach is what the Founding Father's had in mind, they just didn't articulate it very fucking well.