Over my career as a planning consultant, I’ve worked for
many a mayor. I’ve found them to be a honest, hard-working, and dedicated group.
Of course, the nice thing about being a consultant is that it doesn’t allow one
to judge one’s clients. I may have a slight bias, although I do have a good vantage point.
That said, I’ve seen all kinds, genders, races, backgrounds.
A very few traits, predominately back in the day, I could attribute to prejudice
of one sort of another. Meantime, I’ve never known one to steal, ignore the law, or collude with foreign enemies. Most do use the political
prerogative of prevarication, but almost always to further the common good, scarcely
ever for fun, entertainment, or retribution.
A few of them moved to other offices. Several became state
reps or senators. One made a try at governor once, but failed. One became a U.S
Representative. I think there may be more, and some from other states, but I
can’t recall. Lyndon Johnson had been a teacher, an occupation as honorable as
that of mayor.
Overall, cities are well run, usually more so than (this is
my humble opinion and please feel free to harbor your own) state or federal
governments. Of course, (my opinion again) there’s not a city I can think of that
isn’t being operated better than our present federal government.
That brings me to this morning’s point, which is: maybe it
is time for a mayor to be president. Goodness knows, we’ve tried everything from engineers to vice-presidents to movie-actors
to trust-fund babies to professional wrestling promoters. A mayor couldn’t do
worse, and, if past performance is any indicator of future probability, could
do much, much better.
Attorneys have dominated the ranks of president and have generally
served us well. Given the current bias against the educated, though, there are many who don't want to to see another president trained in law, and familiar with the United
States Constitution. Betsy DeVoss probably doesn't even want to see a college graduate again as president.
Back to mayors, though. They understand balanced budgets.
They understand diversity in population. They understand public finance. And
half of them understand the need to keep a careful eye on the males of the
species. That half would also understand that government can never provide the military-industrial
complex all the taxpayer money that it wants. Women are much better than men at
saying “no.”
To follow the idea further, I even have someone in mind. In the
interest of non-partisanship, I can’t name names, but this one is a Southerner
who understands a bit about hurricanes and a lot about a city enjoying itself when it isn't being ravaged by a hurricane.
This
one denies even thinking about running for president, a fact that historically
means one thing:
He’ll run if he thinks he has a chance. Yes, it's a male. Female politicians at the national level still tend to make too many heads explode. He has the current disadvantage of being thoughtful, educated, erudite, intelligent, and an attorney. But we had such a president just one back. There may be hope for us again.
We’ll know he’s serious the day Fox “news” starts producing
lies and slanders against him.
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| I even think that the lack of hair would lessen the ridicule from other countries. |
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