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Nobody wants a stupid President. The leftist media likes to deride conservative politicians as morons so people won't vote for them. They claimed that Reagan was "an amiable dunce"; Dan Quayle was castigated for misspelling "potato"; George W Bush was lambasted as an idiot even though, in actual fact, his college grades were better than John Kerry's.
Unfortunately, brilliance is no panacea. Richard Nixon is considered to be one of our smartest leaders and we all know how that ended up.
Clearly, traits other than raw brains contribute to the greatness of a President. We've already explored the experience our President should have and should not have; in this article, we discuss personality and temperament.
Why does temperament matter? It is said that when Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes met Franklin D. Roosevelt, he remarked that the new President had a ”second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament.” Roosevelt's temperament proved very useful to him as he led American through some trying times, and to more than a few places they didn't really want to go.
Ronald Reagan could have been described similarly: his likability and geniality helped the American people believe that he really cared about them and had their best interests in mind, even at times when things might have seemed a bit doubtful.
On the other hand, you have Mr. Obama, whose air of detached superiority has his most earnest supporters feeling a little chilly. Worse, you have Mr. Nixon, who always seemed like he was trying to pull something tricky on you regardless of whether he actually was.
So what sort of personal attributes and traits serve a President, and the country, well?
Let's make one thing perfectly clear: this does not mean we want a President who "grows in office" and cheerfully comes to agreement with statists on the other side of the aisle. We do not need a leader who is constantly questioning the reality of his own supposed beliefs. It's OK to disagree with opponents - in fact, it's an absolute requirement given the cliff our current administration is driving us off of.
Instead of vilifying them, however, a good leader must try to understand what drives his opponents and what they actually want instead of hiding behind convenient strawmen - false representations of opponents. One of Mr. Obama's very worst traits is his love of strawmen, from claiming Republicans wanted to do "nothing" about the economic collapse in 2008 (would that they had! We'd've been better off!) to allowing his supporters to tar any and all opposition with the racism brush. This is a ludicrous copout, but more to the point, it avoids the real issues of disagreement and debate.
What a contrast with Democratic presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy, who clearly understood the difference between their evil and murderous international opponents (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, respectively) and the opposing views but general patriotism of domestic Republicans. Real leaders are intensely curious. They seek out reality wherever it may be found and spare no effort try to understand both the world and other people as they actually are, both for good and for ill.
There can be too much of a good thing, alas. Jimmy Carter was famous for agonizing late into the night on the petty details of trifling bills and regulations before him. It's not the job of the president to be so curious he can't come to a decision.
It's also essential for a president to be sufficiently confident in his own beliefs and his own nation that he isn't plagued by self-doubt. Reagan was always willing to discuss the best path towards achieving America's goals in the world, but about the merits of the goal itself - the defeat of Communist dictatorship and the triumph of freedom - he would brook no questions, even when the entire commentariat thought him a nutty old fool. Who looked the fool when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989? Not Mr. Reagan.
As a general rule, we want a president with a desire to be always learning. When Sarah Palin's infamous interview with Katie Couric appeared to reveal her as someone who doesn't read, America was horrified and considered Palin disqualified; the later revelation that the interview was edited to make Palin look bad accomplished little in the way of repair. When Michelle Bachmann named Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises as her preferred beach read - now, that's more like it!
One of the many reasons America is so disgusted with its current leaders is that they act as if they believe in nothing beyond their own pursuit of power. As leftist as Mr. Obama's administration is, the further-left is still furious that he didn't go for a full-on single-payer national health care system, given that the Republicans and the voters could hardly have hated that any more than the bill he actually passed. If we're in a war on terror, the right asked of warmonger Bush, why haven't we invaded Iran which is the number one state sponsor of Islamic terrorism and has been for many years?
The great presidents of the past didn't have this problem. Everybody knew what Abraham Lincoln believed in: "The Union, one and inseparable." Franklin Roosevelt believed, wrongly, but devoutly, in the power of government spending to fix all economic ills. Fortunately, World War II turned out to be the ideal nail for his favorite hammer - massive government spending really did fix that particular ill. The medicine that failed Dr. New Deal was perfect for Dr. Win-the-War.
Compare Jimmy Carter. What did he believe in? On the one hand, he naturally had a desire for America to be safe. On the other hand, well, those Iranian mullahs had some legitimate complaints against the Shah. If Mr. Rogers can wear a sweater, why can't we all? By the end of his term, nobody had any clue what Mr. Carter would do next except that he would inevitably screw things up even worse than they already were.
Principle may be a burden in lower office, but it actually helps win presidential campaigns. Great losers of past election cycles had no coherent belief driving their campaign. When Bob Dole, the ultimate snoozer, was handed a gift-wrapped opportunity to explain what the result of his election would be, the best he could come up with was "Think I'll win. Could be big." Bill Clinton romped to a landslide victory; if the candidate has no idea why it matters if you vote for him, why should you?
If you doubt that strong principle is a powerful political weapon, you have only to look at Ron Paul. He offers nothing but principle, and yet that has buried him deep in a pile of money surrounded by screaming fans. Principle alone won't give you the White House but it sure does help.
What's the opposite? Every politician has to change his mind as reality changes over the course of a lifetime, but the more profound the change the better the explanation needs to be. John Kerry was famously derided as a flip-flopper, not for one single change, but a host of them. On the very most fiery issues, such as abortion, you get maybe one change per lifetime if that; any more, and nobody will trust you ever again. America likes to know what it's getting when it picks a president; we resent buying a pig in a poke.
It would be all too humanly easy for the Most Powerful Man On Earth to become accustomed to the imperial trappings of his exalted status. Mr. Obama's constant golfing, mile-long convoys and million-dollar Big Black Canadian Bus send a message Americans don't like.
What we want to see is a solid anchor in the President's believing in the importance of everyday people. When Bill Clinton said "I feel your pain" in rebuking a suffering and angry heckler, we all believed that he really did, and the heckler came off the loser. Mr. Clinton may actually have cared; he definitely had a way of making people feel that he did.
George W Bush didn't have the same level of visibly emotive empathy as Mr. Clinton, but all American knew that he cared deeply about our wounded soldiers and serving military. Cindy Sheehan's assaults never resonated much beyond the fever swamps of the left because most Americans knew that, for all his mistakes, depicting Mr. Bush as a bloodthirsty monster was absurd.
Does anybody believe that Mr. Obama truly cares about anybody? It doesn't look like it; even his fellow blacks are beginning to wonder. Richard Nixon had the same problem, and his famous speech about his children's dog Checkers only helped for a little while.
If you don't care, you're a machine. Nobody wants to be led by an unfeeling machine. As President, you make decisions that destroy or end the lives of real people; voters won't tolerate someone who, they feel, is able to make such decisions flippantly.
We want to see our President agonize over the cost of his decisions as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln did; that way we know he'll make better ones over time.
The Constitution is crystal clear that the president is to be a "natural born Citizen," but that's not what we're getting at. Being American has little to do with your place of birth; what matters is what's in your heart.
Does the candidate believe America is the "last, best hope for the world"? If so, why? Is America unique, and if so, in what way? Should America stay unique, or should we become more like other nations?
Why does half of the rest of the world want to come here, anyway? Because we've stolen their stuff and they rightfully want it back? Or because America is a beacon of liberty and freedom offering safety and success to anyone willing to work hard and follow the rules?
Reagan saw America as a shining city on a hill; in fact, until recently, all American presidents pictured America that way if not always so eloquently. John Adams described our Constitution in religious terms:
The people in America have now the best opportunity, and the greatest trust, in their hands, that Providence ever committed to so small a number, since the transgression of the first pair: if they betray their trust, their guilt will merit even greater punishment than other nations have suffered, and the indignation of heaven.
An individual who can say, as did Barack Obama, that "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism," has described himself as an alien who's far apart from three hundred years of American history and tradition.
There are immigrants from every nation who know that America is unique - that's why they risked their lives to come here. America deserves nothing less in the White House. How can you lead a people if you don't even think there's anything special about them?
Speaking of leadership brings us to the subject of the attributes of leadership that are essential in a President, which is the topic of the next article.