In Peggy Noonan’s column today there’s one small out of context snippet I found thought provoking. Of a couple of senator’s who’d been cursed out by John McCain on the floor of the Senate she writes:
The talk turned to presidents they had known, and why they had wanted the job. This one wanted it as the last item on his résumé, that one wanted it out of an inflated sense of personal destiny. Is that why Mr. McCain wants it? “No”, said one, reflectively. “He wants to help the country.” The other added, with almost an air of wonder, “He wants to make America stronger, he really does.” And then they spoke, these two men who’d been bruised by him, of John McCain’s honest patriotism.
Among recent presidents I have various thoughts about why they wanted to be president. For Ronald Reagan I think the grand reason was that he genuinely wanted to make the country resemble the “shining city on a hill” that it always was in his heart’s eye. The more prosaic reason is that he wanted to fight communism. He won.
I think that George H. W. Bush wanted to be president because it was his turn. Not particularly grand, but there it is.
I have no idea why either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush wanted to be president. To help people? To make the country a better place? I truly believe that every president wants that. They aren’t distinguishing visions. The power? The attention?
I continue to have no idea why Barack Obama wants to be president. I think it may be to make Americans more equal which some will see as a grand objective and some will see as a curse. I see it as an objective impossible on the face of it.
If you’ve got on opinion on this subject, please back it up with documentation or keep it to yourself.
Clinton, I’ve always felt in large part was being a political leader to redeem the failed fathers in his life, to be the man he wished they had been to him. In large part. It always seemed to be something personal and psychological with him, almost to the level of a fetish, which has the same roots.
I agree. Clinton wanted to be president to fill up something that was missing in himself. Helluva reason to be president. The quintessential Baby Boomer.
I can’t help but feel that Obama is on a similar course, in his case searching for an identity denied him by mother and father.
Bigger question, then: Have we reached the point where the job of PotUS is so crushing in its power and responsibility and incandescence that the only persons who would want it bad enough to get it are driven basically by unquenchable psychological conflicts?
When did that happen? After Eisenhower, I suppose.
I don’t think it’s the job but rather the men and, most especially, the Baby Boomers. Obsessed with getting the outfit rather than doing the job.
It also may be a side effect of the process of getting elected.