Thursday, June 16, 2016

Can't we do better?

At USA Today Glenn Reynolds writes about Hillary:
Clinton has moved from the still-unfolding email scandal (which is really a mishandling secrets scandal overlaid with an obstruction of justice scandal), to a cronyism scandal — also involving national-security risks — in which an unqualified donor, Rajiv Fernando, was put on a sensitive government intelligence panel involving nuclear weapons.

...In my lifetime there have been a number of lousy presidents, and few really good ones. A company that consistently picked leaders whom many people disliked, and whose performance was often poor, would probably reevaluate its selection process. Maybe we should do so, too. But how?

Reynolds throws out a few suggestions, but then concludes:

...The presidency as it exists today is a mess. Presidents have too much power, too little accountability and too high a public profile. That makes the job attract the wrong sort of people, and then ensures they’re not up to it.

If we were to shrink the government, and shrink the presidency, we might find that what was left would attract better people — and would be easier even for lesser mortals to execute.

When your political system consistently delivers bad results, it’s time to look at a change.

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