Why Can’t We Be Friends? by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

September 8, 2012 Martha Thomases 7 Comments

I don’t want to have a beer with Mitt Romney.  I don’t want to have a beer with Barack Obama.

For one thing, I don’t drink beer.  If it’s a dreary winter Sunday afternoon, I might nurse a Guinness for a few hours while I consider the futility of human existence. I usually drink wine, although I’ve been known to sip a smart cocktail when the vibe is festive.

But I don’t want to drink with my president, or any other candidate running for office.  One should approach the decision of who to vote for as a job interview, not a social occasion.

I also don’t care what their wives say.  If a wife can’t say good things about her husband, she shouldn’t just get out of the campaign, but out of the marriage as well.

This rant is brought on by the incredibly inane coverage of the election by our media elite.  The straw that broke this camel’s back came from Maureen Dowd.  She made her reputation idly speculating about why Bill and Hillary Clinton stayed married.  She was obsessed with Al Gore and his decision to wear earth tones, allegedly at the advice of a stylist.  Now she’s dug in on Mitt Romney’s uncomfortable public presence.  I get the feeling that she thinks she’s being clever, but instead she trivializes an election that will have serious effects on the American people for decades.

Mitt Romney is not my candidate, but I don’t have a problem with his social awkwardness.  Sure, it’s not normal for a politician to be visibly uncomfortable with the public, but, to me, it’s not a fatal flaw.  I’m much more concerned about the vagueness of his proposals, his insistence that he is not subject to the same standards as others (for example, in releasing his tax forms) and his apparent lack of experience with people who do not share his privileged lifestyle.

Empathy is important to me.  Not because I need my president to be touchy-feely, but because we are a diverse nation, and the president should understand that we not only have many different opinions and beliefs, but different circumstances as well.  Laws and policies will affect us differently.

Intelligence is even more important.  I like my president to be able to think on his feet, to know things.  When I first met Bill Clinton at a small gathering in 1992, I was awed by his ability to answer any question with facts and figures, right off the top of his head.  When he made a decision with which I disagreed, I might think he was wrong, but I knew he had done his homework.

Eloquence is good, too, because we’re going to have to listen to four years of speeches and press conferences.  The George W. Bush years were excruciating.

It is my opinion that Barack Obama excels in these three qualifications.

“But Martha,” you say.  “You said the election is like a job interview.  Shouldn’t you give Romney extra points for his business experience?”

Maybe, if being CEO of a private equity company was the same as being president of a country.  The job of a CEO is to increase the return on the investment of shareholders.  The job of president is to govern all the people.  As this segment of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart demonstrates, it’s not the same thing.  We can’t sell off the states that cost the federal government more than they deliver (although I love the woman from Mississippi who says they shouldn’t be considered failures because they are “nice.”  Try that at your next business meeting, sugar).  Also, I don’t think there is anyone stupid enough to pay money for Alabama.

If you look at Romney’s record in Massachusetts, you would never hire him.  He is ashamed of the only good thing he did, his health care bill.  He certainly didn’t create any jobs.  That’s in no small part because the president isn’t a CEO.  He can’t just order Congress to go along with him.  The Constitution makes a big deal about that.  Barack Obama’s experience as a community organizer actually pays off here.

At this point, the right accuses Obama of being a Kenyan Muslim socialist, out to destroy our way of life.  Chuck Norris warns that his election will bring on “1,000 years of darkness.”  If those are your criteria for deciding on how to best use your vote, logic probably isn’t going to make any difference.  However, according to a business writer for The New York Times. “socialist” isn’t really the right word for Obama.  If anything, he’s to the right of Richard Nixon. This was before the so-called “Reagan Revolution,” and even Ayn Rand hated Reagan more than I did.

Can we stop playing worrying quite so much about who the cool kids are, and more about what they plan to do?  And then can we get a pizza?

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Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, suspects she might not be able to agree on pizza toppings with any of the current candidates.