Regarding Columnist Richard Cohen’s Question — In a Nation of 313 Million, How Is it Statistically Possible that Almost All of Our 2012 Presidential Candidates Would Be Such Bad Choices — America’s Flirtation with Self-Destruction

© 2011 Peter Free

 

06 December 2011

 

 

A statistical twist on the way we customarily think

 

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote about President Obama’s lifelong “luck” yesterday.

 

He penetratingly stated something that I’ve noticed for some time:

 

Obama’s most astounding bit of good luck is the motley crew of opponents the Republican Party has coughed up.

 

It is simply amazing that in a country of 313 million people, many of them literate, the political opposition consists of ignoramuses, dimwits, contrarians, Christian jihadists and, now, two men so thoroughly hollow that a moral principle would make a rattling sound inside them.

 

I am talking of course of Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

 

© 2011 Richard Cohen, Obama’s luck holds with GOP contenders, Washington Post (05 December 2011) (paragraph split)

 

 

An aside on Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, because today they are the front-runners

 

I agree with Cohen’s characterization of Gingrich and Romney.  Both have proven themselves to be unprincipled opportunists, who put the President’s nauseating skill in the same regard to shame.  Manipulative hypocrites all.

 

Romney adds a whiner’s thin-skinned and arrogant prickliness that I find difficult to stomach.  See, for example, his interview with Fox News’ Brett Baier here.

 

A while back, I had some hope for former Governor Romney’s candidacy.  Today, I think that four years of putting up with his pressed-linen character would be even more difficult than tolerating the current President’s unwarrantedly conceited, aloof disdain.

 

 

Cohen’s point about 313 million is the statistical key to this conundrum

 

Obviously, there are much more admirable and qualified potential Republican candidates out there.

 

Even within the 2012 slate, we have Jon Huntsman, who has (unfortunately) proven incapable of generating support, apparently simply because he is so obviously both competent and sane.

 

If we go outside the Republicans’ current list of candidates, we have Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, and Chris Christie — any one of whom would also run sanity-ability circles around each of Huntsman’s opponents.

 

So, it is not as if our American Republic has run out of brain-qualified people to oppose our usually less than admirable “coast-to-fame” President.  It is something else.  We are knowingly choosing some of the most unsuited leaders among us.

 

 

Why choose the least tolerant and the most obviously flawed candidates to lead a great nation?

 

The problem comes from the structure of our politics.

 

First, Government is owned by Plutocrats, who spend unlimited amounts of money to elect people who favor augmenting their wealth, usually at everyone else’s expense.  In that calculus, genuine leadership competence would be harmful because Fat Cats want to maintain their grip on the levers of governance.

 

The second structural problem is the way ordinary Americans have ceded control of both parties to political extremes.  Extremists deal almost exclusively in the world of political fantasy. They also generally put forward candidates who are either good at (a) pretending not to be Plutocrat-owned toadies or (b) too naive (or stupid) to recognize that their ability to escape being controlled by politicized Wealth is limited.

 

The third problem is “us.”  Long accustomed to having or getting what we want without the sacrifice actually necessary to “pay” for it, we seem to be incapable of accepting that fundamental change in the order of things is necessary.  As a result of our complacent cowardice, we continue to elect people who (a) deceitfully reassure us that all is well or, more simply, (b) ignore the nation’s problems.

 

 

The moral? — Until we break out of our cycle of voluntarily-accepted self-delusion, we will continue to elect liars and incompetents to high office

 

That’s what Richard Cohen’s statistical insight was saying, without actually saying it out loud.