What makes an ideal person for president?
Race and gender make no difference. I'd want someone as intelligent as Thomas Jefferson, as inspired as Tom Payne and as thoughtful and principled as Abe Lincoln. In more recent times that person should be someone as strong as Margret Thatcher, as sympathetic as Benazir Bhutto and as wise as Indria Gandhi.
We couldn't possibly find all these characteristics in one person. But that would be what I'd want in an ideal president.
Meanwhile we have to take what we can get. All of the people I've mentioned had a number of weakness, pretty much as the rest of us. But we are more likely to tolerate the foibles of those who lived long ago than those of today and of the recent past.
All the rest is emotion. Until the summer, we shall have three candidates and then two. Then we shall vote based on our emotions. I don't see any of the characteristics in these candidates that I see in those who are in my ideal group.
But one will be in charge of what this great nation does domestically and in our relations with the world. Can we trust that any of them are up to the job? History is full of leaders who bungled it. Let's hope that luck is on our side in this period of what will be history in a few years.
