From Where I sit » Shark for President.

Shark for President.

January 29th, 2007

On NPR this weekend, viagra sale troche a newscaster asked the audience to think of someone they knew in their own lives who might make a good President of the United States.

The exercise scared the POTUS out of me.

I don’t know a single soul that I would trust to be comptroller of Wauwatosa, nurse Wisconsin let alone run the most powerful country on the planet.

In fact, the better I knew someone the less qualified they seemed to be to hold office.

Then I realized there was one person I had met who might possibly barely qualify to be President: Harvard-trained lawyer Rick Essenberg who blogs regularly at Shark & Shepherd.

Rick seems wickedly smart, well-informed, well-spoken, and diplomatic even in disagreement.

Maybe if I knew Rick better the mere thought of giving him the power to send the F.B.I. after me would have me hiding in a closet wearing one of J. Edgar Hoover’s old dresses, but the sad truth is I know no one better to suggest for the job.

And if a shark is going to sit in the Oval Office, I’d rather have it be one who also had the soul of a shepherd.

Entry Filed under: Observations,Politics

2 Comments Add your own

1. buzz | January 29th, 2007 at 10:05 am

No one who actually wants the job should be allowed to have it. Who was it who said that, long before I did, and more eloquently?

There was a short speculative fiction story that I read long enough ago that I’ve forgotten both the author, title, and anything else except the basic premise: In some future society the “President” is chosen at random. You get a month, or a week, or something like that, to make decisions, then someone else takes over.

Would that actually work? Probably not.
2. Brian | January 29th, 2007 at 5:43 pm

There was a short speculative fiction story that I read long enough ago that I‚Äôve forgotten both the author, title, and anything else except the basic premise: In some future society the ‚ÄúPresident‚Äù is chosen at random

Sounds like In The Years of the City; “Gwenanda and the Supremes” by Fred Pohl.. Or not .. the title character is a draftee to the Supreme Court; most of the business of the draftee government is to undo as many laws as possible.

I don’t see it happening (I’m a cynic – the current pols would have to give up everything they’ve spent their life working for) but it was an entertaining story.