A President by Design ?

[ishtat]

There seems to be some sort of consensus that neither the current President, nor the immediate past President are the best choices as candidates in 2024. The various reasons have been thrashed over so many times there is no point repeating them.

So how would you design a Presidential candidate that can win in 2024? Now the hard part; can you do so without any reference to any individual by name or specific current or past office.

As an example I suggest that the most winnable candidate will be:

White.
Male
Age 45/58
Not Washington.
Leadership experience: Possibly Military/or Governor.
Agenda: To unite the nation.
Personality: Mr Nice Guy - empathetic but strong.
Ideology: Somewhere on the range of moderate Democrat to right of centre Republican.
Policies: generally unimportant, beyond bland statements to look after Americans.
Strengths: the ability to attract a top class cabinet.

What do you think? My design could fit someone from either party because it is aimed at the 'centre' voter whose most important feature is electability.

But remember - No names or cheer leading for any particular person.

 

[jaF0]

Non -White
Female
Age 45/58
Not Washington.
Leadership experience: Possibly Civil Rights Adviocate
Agenda: To unite the nation.
Personality: Ms Nice Gal - empathetic but strong.
Ideology: Somewhere on the range of moderate Republican to left of center Democrat.
Policies: Fair. Impartial. Not a corporate puppet.
Strengths: the ability to attract a top class cabinet and effectively neuter the likes of Mitch.

 

[Champakian]

So much for the dream of content of character...

 

[pecksniff]

Agenda: To unite the nation.

No, what we need is a president who will divide the nation -- along the lines of class, not culture. Someone who can unite everybody else against the top 20%.

 

[Cubantripod]

No, what we need is a president who will divide the nation -- along the lines of class, not culture. Someone who can unite everybody else against the top 20%.

You didn't learn anything from the 20th century did you?

 

[NorthernVAM]

There seems to be some sort of consensus that neither the current President, nor the immediate past President are the best choices as candidates in 2024. The various reasons have been thrashed over so many times there is no point repeating them.

So how would you design a Presidential candidate that can win in 2024? Now the hard part; can you do so without any reference to any individual by name or specific current or past office.

As an example I suggest that the most winnable candidate will be:

White.
Male
Age 45/58
Not Washington.
Leadership experience: Possibly Military/or Governor.
Agenda: To unite the nation.
Personality: Mr Nice Guy - empathetic but strong.
Ideology: Somewhere on the range of moderate Democrat to right of centre Republican.
Policies: generally unimportant, beyond bland statements to look after Americans.
Strengths: the ability to attract a top class cabinet.

What do you think? My design could fit someone from either party because it is aimed at the 'centre' voter whose most important feature is electability.

But remember - No names or cheer leading for any particular person.

Gee -- I think you just described the guy who just became Governor in Virginia. I think he checks all your boxes, and his win was largely based upon the ability to appeal to white suburban women. Apparently they are the largest bloc of swing voters .. so appealing to that demographic block is where the battle ground is.

Thoughts?

 

[pecksniff]

You didn't learn anything from the 20th century did you?

We can have class-based politics without even a tendency towards totalitarian Communism. That's how all the thriving social democracies got where they are. That is the most important lesson to learn from the 20th Century.

 

[NorthernVAM]

We can have class-based politics without even a tendency towards totalitarian Communism. That's how all the thriving social democracies got wherei they are. That is the most important lesson to learn from the 20th Century.

Well -- I'm not sure I would call today's "class structure" really fits into the classic Marxist industrial revolution model. All civilizations or societies have some organizational structure, where there is some type of hierarchy. I think I agree with your statement, but not necessarily the your nomenclature.

What I find interesting about "assimilation" in the US, is that most immigrants start at the bottom of the social heap, meaning that they start out arriving here in poverty. So, the first generation basically has it the hardest in terms of living at the bottom of the society. From there the first generation builds up some wealth, and provides an environment where their children will be able to climb up the socioeconomic ladder. I think most groups, including groups that have suffered unfair prejudices have had success stories in terms of having their children live a "wealthier" life in absolute terms than the previous generation.

There are some exceptions to this -- particularly in the case where individuals get derailed by some form of self destructive behavior -- such as alcohol, drugs, mental illness, etc. Or when children don't have healthy parenting, it is more likely that they aren't going to be able to take advantage of the opportunities that the society has to move up the social ladder. Addressing human misery and self destructive behaviors is really difficult in a large society like ours -- where the support of extended family or a tribe has somehow been lost.

Basically, I believe if you look at the "underclass" more closely, you will find just abject human misery -- and a society that has lost the ability or the will to care for those folks. When I watch documentaries on homeless folks, more often than not the way the folks got to be homeless was through some addiction or mental illness, and the society doesn't have the ability to cope with that.

If you could solve it with money, it would have already been solved I think -- but how do you repair a broken human being? I don't think we know how to anymore -- if we ever did, so there will always be a set of folks at the bottom who are in pure abject misery and while you can throw money at them with social programs, it just leads to multi-generational misery -- and a multi-generational underclass. How can you fix that?

 

[pecksniff]

Well -- I'm not sure I would call today's "class structure" really fits into the classic Marxist industrial revolution model.

Doesn't matter -- even in a post-industrial society, there are still such things as conflicting class interests. And you don't need to be any kind of Marxist to know a class enemy when you see one.

There will always be a socioeconomic pyramid -- but it could be a much flatter pyramid, with the top and bottom much closer together, than in the U.S. at present -- and in the social democracies it is flatter. For that matter it was flatter in the U.S. before the 1970s, when the business interests read the Powell Memo and really started to organize in their own class interests (see the Koch Brothers' organizations). There was a time when your boss would live next door to you, in a bigger and fancier house but still essentially the same kind of house. But what we have now is a full-blown late-stage plutocracy.

"We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."

-- Louis D Brandeis.

 

[Rightguide]

We can have class-based politics without even a tendency towards totalitarian Communism. That's how all the thriving social democracies got where they are. That is the most important lesson to learn from the 20th Century.

Bullshit. When the golden calve policies of the left fail, they immediately look to totalitarianism as the solution. The left is only about power. It isn't about freedom writ large or individual liberty.

 

[pecksniff]

Bullshit. When the golden calve policies of the left fail, they immediately look to totalitarianism as the solution.

That has never happened in the actually existing social democracies.

 

[NorthernVAM]

Doesn't matter -- even in a post-industrial society, there are still such things as conflicting class interests. And you don't need to be any kind of Marxist to know a class enemy when you see one.

There will always be a socioeconomic pyramid -- but it could be a much flatter pyramid, with the top and bottom much closer together, than in the U.S. at present -- and in the social democracies it is flatter. For that matter it was flatter in the U.S. before the 1970s, when the business interests read the Powell Memo and really started to organize in their own class interests (see the Koch Brothers' organizations). There was a time when your boss would live next door to you, in a bigger and fancier house but still essentially the same kind of house. But what we have now is a full-blown late-stage plutocracy.

"We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."

-- Louis D Brandeis.

I'm not convinced that there isn't some type of natural law that might be involved with unequal distribution of resources built into an organizational hierarchy. In other words, inequality might be an integral part of the "survival of the species" evolutionary theory. If that's the case, then there is some "invisible" evolutionary pressure towards unequal distribution of resources that we "subconsciously" adapt to with our behavior.

Are you familiar with the NIMH Rat Experiment?

https://historyofyesterday.com/the-horrifying-study-that-predicted-human-extinction-244fa185087b

Somehow, I don't think there is no way to implement the utopian ideal of "fairness" .. I think social hierarchy may just be part of our biological makeup, and is adaption to having to survive in a competitive environment where you struggle to survive. If that's the case inequality seems to be built into evolution in some respects since we don't all have the same capabilities but depending upon the capabilities we have we adapt strategies to survive .... weaker members of society have to find ways to survive in the presence of stronger members ... and have different behaviors than the stronger members.

 

[rae121452]

you didn't hear it from me-but i know for a fact that the repub candidate is going to be jfk, jr.

 

[jomar]

Bullshit. When the golden calve policies of the left fail, they immediately look to totalitarianism as the solution. The left is only about power. It isn't about freedom writ large or individual liberty.

What is the right about?

 

[pecksniff]

What is the right about?

Not freedom.

 

[Bud_Spencer]

What is the right about?

Prosperity, rule of law, liberty, tranquility, justice.

 

[pecksniff]

Prosperity, rule of law, liberty, tranquility, justice.

Not at any time since 1964, it isn't.

 

[Bud_Spencer]

Race: Don't care
Sex: Don't care
Age: Don't care, but I'd look askance at anyone under 50
Not Washington.
Leadership experience: Possibly Military/or Governor.
Agenda: To reduce the size and scope of DC
Personality: Affable but not agreeable
Ideology: Libertarian right.
Policies: America first, but with a decent resect for our place in the world.
Strengths: Ability to communicate effectively without the media

 

[pecksniff]

Why does everybody keep saying "Not Washington"? Our experience to date with Washington outsiders -- Carter, Reagan, W, Trump -- has not been encouraging. Clinton was an outsider, but that's about as good as it gets. Really, we should never again have a president who has not served in Congress -- that's how you learn how things get done and how they don't.

 

[pecksniff]

Agenda: To reduce the size and scope of DC

That's the last thing we need. The further you go down the federal-state-local hierarchy, the more incompetence, ignorance, stupidity and corruption you will find.

 

[jomar]

Prosperity, rule of law, liberty, tranquility, justice.

Yuck, yuck…good one!

 

[Champakian]

No, what we need is a president who will divide the nation -- along the lines of class, not culture. Someone who can unite everybody else against the top 20%.

Yes. Inciting wealth envy is the trick towards uniting the people and
uniting them in a common cause, increasing the weal of the Republic...


Oh yeah. That always works very well. History is resplendent with examples.

Take France, for example.

 

[RobDownSouth]

This....

So much for the dream of content of character...

From the guy who also gave us this....

I call him a nigger all the time. It's funny to watch him turn purple and start spitting...

 

[HisArpy]

Gee -- I think you just described the guy who just became Governor in Virginia. I think he checks all your boxes, and his win was largely based upon the ability to appeal to white suburban women. Apparently they are the largest bloc of swing voters .. so appealing to that demographic block is where the battle ground is.

Thoughts?

It's a perfect description of California's governor Hair Gel.

 

[Earthlyone]

Agenda: To unite the nation.

Impossible now. The country is far too big and unwieldy to unite under one person.