YOU Aren't Qualified to be President

We've all been told that any boy (and in the past generation or two, any girl) can grow up to become President of the United States. And it's true in a very narrow sense, the same sense in which it's true that any boy or girl can grow up to be a brain surgeon. But guess what? Those kids have to be smart enough, study hard enough, and be good enough to be entrusted with sharp objects in the vicinity of someones brain!

Being President is a very demanding job. It requires judgement, wisdom, knowledge and respect for the Constitution--after all, the Presidential oath is first and foremost to defend the Constitution against all enemies, domestic and foreign. We've been reminded of all this again and again by both parties. But now we suddenly discover that the only real requirement is being an ordinary person just like you and me!

Get real people! YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT! People who don't know anything usually think they can do anything. They look at the president and say, "Hell, ah could do that! That ain't so tough." For the past eight years we've had a stunning example of how NOT true this is! But no, Sarah Palin is qualified to be the President-in-Waiting (aka Veep) because she's struggled with the refining challenges of raising five kids, having a child with a disability, dealing with an unwed daughter....OH, GIVE ME A BREAK! There're a hell of a lot of women who have struggled with more but that doesn't make them qualified to be President!

We are now being treated to the complete democratization of American politics: The masses finally feel so insulted, so humiliated, so powerless that they are foisting 'one of their own' into the White House. It will truly be a dictatorship of the prolitariate, with the wealthiest people in the nation pulling all the strings to once again enrich themselves through the Republican's new religion of borrow-and-spend.

Essayist and social commentator H.L Mencken once described democracy as “simply a battle of charlatans for the votes of idiots.” Writing in 1937 for the Baltimore Evening Sun, Mencken theorized that by now “the incurable idiots may conceivably constitute an absolute majority of the population.” He also said, "People usually get the government they deserve, and they deserve to get it good and hard." (I would add, "right up the ass" to the end of that quote.)