Maybe it’s time to elect a senator rather than a governor
It is often said, usually by moderate Republicans, that the GOP should never nominate a senator as its presidential candidate.
Governors, after all, have experience managing bureaucracies, and their abilities more neatly translate into the Oval Office. Last year at CPAC, Governor Chris Christie contrasted his own leadership to “people in Washington who only want to talk.” It wasn’t lost on anyone who he meant.
There’s something to that critique, especially following the amateurish and demagogic presidency of former senator Barack Obama. As Madeleine Lee contemplates in Henry Adams’ novel Democracy: “To her mind the Senate was a place where people went to recite speeches, and she naively assumed that the speeches were useful and had a purpose, but as they did not interest her she never went again.”
So pointless speechifying is a background senators must have. But another is foreign policy, something with which governors have no experience whatsoever.
And if this year’s CPAC is any indication, it might be time to consider nominating one of those bloviating senators. The three serious 2016 Republican presidential candidates with gubernatorial experience, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie, offered nothing on foreign policy beyond gaffes and slogans.
Read more at http://rare.us/story/maybe-its-time-to-elect-a-senator-rather-than-a-governor/#Mmfi47qwAHXGqd7A.99
-Virgil
It is often said, usually by moderate Republicans, that the GOP should never nominate a senator as its presidential candidate.
Governors, after all, have experience managing bureaucracies, and their abilities more neatly translate into the Oval Office. Last year at CPAC, Governor Chris Christie contrasted his own leadership to “people in Washington who only want to talk.” It wasn’t lost on anyone who he meant.
There’s something to that critique, especially following the amateurish and demagogic presidency of former senator Barack Obama. As Madeleine Lee contemplates in Henry Adams’ novel Democracy: “To her mind the Senate was a place where people went to recite speeches, and she naively assumed that the speeches were useful and had a purpose, but as they did not interest her she never went again.”
So pointless speechifying is a background senators must have. But another is foreign policy, something with which governors have no experience whatsoever.
And if this year’s CPAC is any indication, it might be time to consider nominating one of those bloviating senators. The three serious 2016 Republican presidential candidates with gubernatorial experience, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie, offered nothing on foreign policy beyond gaffes and slogans.
Read more at http://rare.us/story/maybe-its-time-to-elect-a-senator-rather-than-a-governor/#Mmfi47qwAHXGqd7A.99
-Virgil
