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Don’t Be NICE: Advise the Presidential Candidates on President’s Day

Don’t Be NICE: Advise the Presidential Candidates on President’s Day

Last updated on: February 16, 2015 at 7:57 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Don’t Be NICE: Advise the Presidential Candidates on President’s Day 2015-02-15T22:43:35-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Tomorrow is the worst holiday in the secular calendar: Presidents’ Day. We do not have a Supreme Court Day or a Congress Day because it is all about the presidency. Our new imperial presidency demands we honor not just the great leaders, Washington and Lincoln, but James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover. There was a discussion of an Unelected Agency Head Day until it was pointed out that every day is Unelected Agency Head Day.

The power to regulate is greater now than the power to legislate.

But let me not be a curmudgeon and lift a glass to genocidal maniacs like Democrat Andy Jackson or the racist progressive Woodrow Wilson . . . actually I cannot do it. Let me continue a curmudgeon about notable nonentities to hold the office such Warren G. Harding while enjoying the holiday and pretending that Ronald Wilson Reagan is still President.

Since having your own holiday in the US requires saving the nation (Veterans’ Day/MLK), being Jesus, or actual work (Labor Day), those not inclined to sacrifice, godliness, or labor often run for the Presidency of the United States. So many people are running in my party, the one that saved the Union, that only one serious candidate is running in the other party along with Joe Biden.

Behind at least one Bush, there was a Reagan, so there is hope that out of the maelstrom of egos a competent candidate exists. How will we know? How can we find her or him?

I turn to the best book on the twenty-first century, C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, a leadership manual and how-to-book on defeating the evils of our time. Listening to advisors, all channelling the same conventional wisdom, will help a candidate become nice and will likely make them unfit to fight. So here are ten leadership lessons from the Oxford sage and the candidate that most needs to hear the lesson.

Ideologues get the problem right, but their solution will be just as bad as the problem.

Rand Paul, I am looking at you. You get the problems we face, nobody does that better, and you reach out to groups the GOP shamefully ignores.

And yet I shan’t vote for you until convinced that you do not view the solution to every problem through your simple ideology. We do not need a libertarian ideology to replace the statist ideology that has governed us. We need a conservative: one who recognizes change and tradition and hesitates to change anything*.*

First do no harm.

Doing what it takes to win for “the good guys” certainly makes you one of the bad guys.

Ted Cruz: I am positive I agree with your principles. Will you do whatever it takes to advance those principles? If so, then join the other party. A conservative values people over programs and will not do whatever it takes to win. Are you a gentleman? Better to lose a Republican than to win with a ruthlessness that destroys the civil society you seek to save.

A focus on money corrupts, lots of money corrupts absolutely.

Jeb Bush: you will raise the most money on the GOP side. You win! But like John Connelly, is this the race you wish to win? What are you promising? What are you saying you will not do? Who are you selling out? Money is not evil in itself, but raising it in boat loads might change you. Do not let it. Tell us what the core policy values you have that cannot be bought.

Are you just the gentle face for the Establishment?

Get an in-house skeptic.

Mr. Huckabee, the “good guys” in Lewis’ had McPhee. Name your in-house critic and your family members do not count. Who tells you to be still? Do you have someone who says: “Don’t hawk this diabetes supplement?” Do you listen to them? Do you fire people who give you bad news? Tell us who your in-house skeptic is and we will consider you. Pastors and politicians have a bad habit of surrounding themselves with sycophants and you have been both.

The greatest compromises with evil will sound sensible in a meeting of your team.

Mr. Rubio: you seem a decent man, but a man who has been “pushed” to bigger things for some time. Be careful. Always have the “what if everyone heard this conversation” test in your mind during team meetings. Much evil is done when the people around the boss start going further and further into “boss world.” They end up approving what seems wretched to the rest of us, because compared to other things, they considered it was sane.

A confusion of language is the sign of judgment on your evil.

Mr. Jindal: you are a brilliant man and successful. Say what you have to say plainly. Avoid the jargon that can hide so much. Do not use a single word, ever, on the campaign trail that obscures. Speak the truth and let the Devil take the government speak.

Great evils are done in the quest for competence or “cutting the red tape.”

Ms. Fiorini: you ran a business. Government is not a business. Another term for red tape is “protection for our liberties.” We know you are a competent leader: are you a virtuous one?

If you think it is all about you, then you are a figurehead for the Devil.

Mrs. Clinton, you wish to be President.

I am sure of it. She is the leader of Clinton Inc. which is ready for her to be President. Monied interests are pouring money into her campaign just as they did in the past.

Mrs. Clinton: are you sure that you are in charge, really? Or are you a figurehead for all the interests that will fund and control you once you are in office? If for one moment Mrs. Clinton would stop being “Jules,” the figurehead into which others pour their dreams, she might go back to the promising person she was as a Goldwater supporter.

If being President means sacrificing friends and family, then do not be President.

Mr. Walker: can you run without sacrificing your awesome family? You are a young man. Are you sure that being President will not end up costing you a son? Don’t ask if they are “for it.” Ask if eighty-year old you will still be “for it.”

Cut corners and you will end up a tool.

Mr. Carson are you sure you are qualified to be President? Are you trying to jump too far, too quickly? If so, then you might discover that you become a tool for those who hate all you love.

So there is my advice to ten of our present candidates. Who do I favor? The first candidate to get a bear and Merlin to travel with him on the trail will get my vote.

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