A businessman such as Wilbur Ross who, like virtually every businessman without any civic experience whatsoever, does not grasp the difference between being the top boss of a company and being an official in government.
Here’s one simple difference: a businessman believes he can hire and fire whomever he wants. A government official in a democracy can’t.
Businessmen — including Tom Steyer — do not seem to get democratic governance. I get it. I’m a voter, I read stuff, I think about stuff. How on earth is it that I understand more about government than very rich businesspeople?
So why on this earth would a very rich businessman think I’d consider voting for him?
The arrogant miscalculation leading someone like Tom Steyer to run for the presidency turns me off.
I don’t entirely understand the automatic worship so many people have for top soldiers like Jim Mattis. Maybe it’s because as we rage through our national nightmare people need to believe in and trust the apparently straightforward righteousness of someone, so why not a general? Someone who is a stoic, who stands erect, at attention.
“At attention.” That’s why not.
A country does need a military, for at least one reason. But as I understand it, the training and nature of a soldier is — and, I guess, must be — to obey the commander. It’d be a pretty wacky army in which soldiers would get to question orders. (Which, by the way, is why I do not have the character to be in the military.)
But as necessary as absolute obedience may be in soldiers, it’s the antithesis of what we need in a political leader. From everything I’m now reading about Mattis, his reluctance to criticize his ex-commander is part of his rigorous military philosophy.
But we don’t need that military philosophy in the White House. We need an independent brain with the capacity to understand that following orders does not apply here. What we need is someone who understands that in a crisis he must follow a glorious cause that rises high above his commander in chief.