Spoiled by Great Presidents

I just saw a headline (and didn’t bother to read the article), “Betsy DeVos is a Stupid, Stupid Person”. Of course the reason we have her is obvious: we have a stupid president who wants to be the smartest person in the room. And the reason we have him is also obvious: we let stupid people vote.

This is not a post to complain about the voting rights of stupid people. I wholeheartedly believe that everyone should be allowed to vote, and that everyone should be represented.

However, since the full spectrum of people are voting, we should expect to have a full spectrum of presidents.

As far as that goes, we have been very lucky until now. Barack Obama was a great president, and we have been spoiled for the last eight years. For many decades, we have had some good presidents and some bad ones, but relatively speaking, even the bad presidents have been pretty good. All of the presidents in my memory, which goes back to Gerald Ford, have been genuinely diligent leaders who took the task seriously. They have all been above-average people. Even the ones who regularly gaffed in front of the camera were in fact quite capable people.

Which is truly remarkable, given who votes for them. We have been long overdue to receive a leader like Trump. It was only a matter of time.

From that viewpoint, the correct course of action seems to be to suffer through Trump’s presidency. Hopefully we can learn some lessons along the way.