Best qualified Presidents

[Dan '82]

You hear people talking about how Hillary is one of the most qualified candidates ever to run for office, the same could be said for Herbert Hoover and James Buchanan.

[David Horn]

(07-27-2016, 11:08 PM)Dan Wrote: You hear people talking about how Hillary is one of the most qualified candidates ever to run for office, the same could be said for Herbert Hoover and James Buchanan.

Exactly.  Being President means having the chops and the insight to use them well.  I'm not sold on Hillary on the insight issue alone.  She seems perpetually tone-deaf, emphasizing the less important and ignoring the more.  I'm all for children being a prime focus, but not when root cause is to little income in the household.  Fix the core problem, and the byproduct may very well fix itself.

[Eric the Green]

Herbert Hoover was never elected to any office, however. He was a successful cabinet official and administrator who accomplished concrete things, like Hillary, but not so much working with politicians and officials. So Buchanan yes, but Hoover no.

Qualifications mean something when you are running against a candidate who has none.

[Anthony '58]

But doesn't this very concept exalt "book knowledge" over practical knowledge?

[pbrower2a]

One can learn more faster from book-knowledge in formal education than from learning in the School of Hard Knocks. Book-learning allows one to learn from other people's mistakes. Book-learning may be pointless for teaching creativity and imagination, both of which one has or does not have. Book learning may prevent one from committing gross blunders. Nobody wants to be the new George Armstrong Custer, and no military staff wants any senior officer to be the new George Armstrong Custer.

Every blunder must first seduce with the temptation of brilliance.

The problem isn't that a Custer gets killed; military defeats of reckless soldiers may keep a political order from getting some very bad leaders. It's instead that someone like Custer takes a huge number of people of people down with him.

[MillsT_98]

(07-29-2016, 03:42 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: One can learn more faster from book-knowledge in formal education than from learning in the School of Hard Knocks.  Book-learning allows one to learn from other people's mistakes. Book-learning may be pointless for teaching creativity and imagination, both of which one has or does not have. Book learning may prevent one from committing gross blunders.  Nobody wants to be the new George Armstrong Custer, and no military staff wants any senior officer to be the new George Armstrong Custer.

Every blunder must first seduce with the temptation of brilliance.  

The problem isn't that a Custer gets killed; military  defeats of reckless soldiers may keep a political order from getting some very bad leaders. It's instead that someone like Custer takes a huge number of people of people down with him.

And that's what I fear about Trump. I don't want the economy to tank and him bringing us down with it.