Let’s Vote Against Negative Campaigning

Imagine that you want to hire someone to handle an important and complex job for you. Further imagine that after advertising the position, you locate two people who might fill the position. Each appears to have the skills, experience, and motivation to do a first rate job.

Now suppose you call the first prospect into your office. You ask the person to explain why he or she should be hired.

How would you feel if—instead of making a case for being hired—the person uses a good chunk of the interview time to bash the other candidate? I’m guessing you would be disgusted for several reasons. First, you’d not know much about the person’s qualifications. Second, you’d see that the candidate failed to focus on the job at hand: building a case for getting hired. Third, you’d be insulted because the candidate would in effect tell you that you don’t have the smarts to evaluate the other person.

Think of this the next time you see a negative commercial running on behalf of a presidential candidate. Realize that you are not getting useful information, and that the candidate seems to have nothing to save about his own talents, and finally that the candidate has contempt for your critical skills.

Alas, both candidates will be using negative advertising. But I’m going to pay attention to the one who relies most on this useless and dangerous procedure. Then I’ll vote for the other guy.

So listen up Barack and John: If you want my vote, tell me what you’re going to do for me.

The President's Chair--an etymology for President's Day

If you think that our president just sits around all day in the Oval Office solving problems—or maybe NOT solving problems—you may be onto something, at least etymologically speaking.

The president's pr people might want us to view our chief executive as someone carrying out bold actions—leading, commanding, managing, organizing, budgeting, inspiring, presiding.

"Sitting" isn't on the list, but when we trace the word "president" to its Latin root, we find sedere, "to sit." The syllable "sed" gives us a clue that "sedentary" also arises—so to speak—from the same source. No way around it: the president is a sitter.

But don't take the etymologist's word for it. Here's what Harry Truman, the thirty-third president said about the job: "I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them."

Given that the etymology of "president" teaches us that the president is "someone who sits," we're forced to conclude that the widely used phrase "sitting president" is a redundancy. But being redundant is hardly the nastiest label said about the job. While serving as president, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "...it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends."

Welcome!

Hello all,
Welcome to the blog for How to be President of the USA, a book by Murray Suid. I'll be posting excerpts of the book as well as thoughts on politics and the general state of things.
Be well,
Murray Suid