Unqualified

THE BIG QUESTION these days is: is Barack Obama qualified to be President of the United States? For conservatives, the answer is simple, predictable, and thoughtless. Of course not. presumably, in their minds, both of the Bushes were. But the dirty little secret is, as Bill Clinton pointed out: nobody is. It is not possible to be "qualified" to be president of the United States. When Robert MacNamara, the CEO of Ford Motor Company, was offered the job of Secretary of Defense, he told Kennedy that he wasn't qualified. Kennedy replied that he had never attended a school for would be presidents either. Nobody escapes the White House without serious blunders darkening the resume. Washington had his heavy handed response to the whiskey rebellion, Adams his "Alien and Sedition Act", Jefferson his disastrous (for the American economy) trade embargo. Perhaps Lincoln was a bit of a tyrant, and FDR tried to "pack" the Supreme Court, to save his "new Deal". Forty four presidents, more than forty four blunders, all told. And nobody could have done any better. Few people have the good sense to relinquish political power voluntarily, or to refrain from pursuing it in the first place. When Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of the new state of Israel in 1948, he basically said "you gotta be kidding. I'm a scientist, and know nothing about political leadership."The ironic thing is, he quite likely would have been the greatest head of state in history, if only for his intelligence and wisdom. But at least in America we can vote 'em out of office.