While it’s true that the Presidency is unlike any other type of job, I believe there are things that one can do to give sufficient evidence that they are qualified to manage and lead a large government organization. I’ve interviewed and hired hundreds of people in my career. The main key thing I’ve learned when determining promotions and filling vacancies is that past performance is the best indicator of future success. A Presidential candidate needs experience managing something large. A Senator of less than 4 years simply hasn’t had enough evidence of past performance to be considered. My preferred presidential candidate would have experience managing his own business, some years in the congress/senate and two terms as a Governor. In that way, his/her track record is established and I would feel comfortable casting my vote for them after reviewing their record. In the last Presidential election, none of the candidates had these qualifications. Sarah Palin was the closest (and I wouldn’t have voted for her for a host of other reasons). I don’t care that McCain was a war hero/prisoner of war. Tell me what he’s done when he’s been in charge of managing something! Tell me how his State was when he took office as Governor and how it was when he left – then I’ll have something to judge him by. There are probably other things one can do besides being a Governor to show sufficient executive experience – being a military general, or being a successful major CEO – (but then I would ask the question “do they have sufficient political experience to be President?”).As for his being "qualified." Well, by your definition, who is qualified? It's not as though there is a training program for being President, except maybe being Vice President. I'd rather have a smart, creative individual, rather than a dull-witted politician.(Can you say "Dan Quayle" or Spiro Agnew" or "Gerald Ford"?) No offense to any of those folks, as I think it's an "on-the-job" learning process, and what you need are values and principles, which I will admit, Obama is weak on.]
As for President Obama being week on values and principles – I don’t quite agree. While he doesn’t reflect my values and principles, I think he has been consistent and predictable. I think he could be more open about what his real principles and values are. I think Clinton and Bush Sr. had less core values than President Obama. I agree that I would strongly prefer a President that has core beliefs and principles guiding his decisions (rather than “how will this affect my chances at reelection?).
Come on – you can do better than that… Just dismissing a legitimate concern as “nonsense” isn’t helpful. The videos purport to show that the images were tampered with and then go on to show evidence of why that’s so. The documents in question were downloaded from whitehouse.gov – I think they are legitimate. http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default ... g-form.pdfAs for the youtube "evidence" it is nonsense, but that won't stop anybody.]
My guess is that the document is legitimate and the concerns raised in the videos can be explained away by the process used by the scanner when the OCR button is pushed – but I’m not enough of a scanner expert to be certain. When I watched them – I found them compelling until I did a little more research – wherein I just became uncertain. The sad thing is, it wouldn’t surprise if the documents were forged. As you and other’s have noted, the controversy is still out there – and isn’t going away, just because he produced a birth certificate.
I wish instead of arguing about birth certificates, we could debate something meaningful – like how to really live within our means as a nation.
Regards Jack