Does anybody besides me think that we live on a mad, mad, mad, mad world?
The USA, surely one of the freest and best off countries in the world, just finished our presidential elections last month.
Now the job of the President is, I believe, to run the U.S. government – an organization with millions of employees. I would think that the primary qualification for that would be demonstrated managerial competence.
What difference does it make what policies or goals one espouses, if you don’t have the ability to make them happen?
I’m not that great a fan of Mitt Romney, but he was the only candidate from either party who was qualified on that basis. And he didn’t come close to being the Republican candidate, despite spending many millions of dollars.
Why? Because he is a member of a religion which is less than 200 years old, and therefore a very large percentage of voters would not vote for him. In fact, something like 30% of voters felt it was perfectly okay to say they wouldn’t vote for him for that reason.
The “dirty little secret” – really, the 600 pound gorilla in the room of American politics, is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are CAPABLE of delivering most of what they promise.
And yet, year after year, election after election, despite broken promise after broken promise, Americans continue to vote for candidates based on what they promise – plus such irrelevancies as their religion, race, age, gender and how well they speak. Not to speak of demonstrably false rumors.
Does that make sense?
And don’t tell me that is proof that America is bad or some such nonsense. It is worse in most other countries.