What a delight to inform you that I am sleeping much better now that I have abdicated my temporary presidential campaign. That responsibility was simply too much to maintain in the face of all the obstacles defended by the financial powers that be, the petrified status quo.
It has become clear to me since my departure from the 2020 election that the job of achieving my candidacy was just one difficulty of the job itself. Having now backed off, I’ve opened up hours of free time to read – and I’ve been taking care of that.
For example, I caught up with the May 2018 edition of The Atlantic, a most invigorating magazine. It contains an article called, “How the Presidency Became Impossible.” Enlightening, to say the very least.
Atlantic’swriter, John Dickerson spends 14 pages explaining what is expected of a president. John was a co-anchor of CBS This Morning and a contributing editor to the magazine. I don’t know if he’s still there, because I don’t commonly watch This Morning.
But, his piece of writing is remarkable. The job, he explains in exquisite detail, is the most rigorous acting job on the planet. What one is required to do as president is multi-task between being an uncle to every citizen and a consummate warlord.
I’m not going into detail here. However, you ought to go to your local library and read a copy of the piece I’m talking about. Between the time the founding fathers designed the office to today is more than the quarter of a millennium that’s passed.
It has become more like the distance from the Earth to Jupiter or Saturn. The complexity of heading our multinational organization with 2.1 million employees and a $4 trillion budget is unimaginable.
It has nothing to do with being able to make it work. Rather, it is akin to learning how to keep a million horsepower truck on the road that wildly rumbles along, driven by the needs and desires of 330 million people, not at all sure of what they really want.
John points out that trying to keep all the employees, all the citizens, all the international allies, and all the country’s perceived enemies either satisfied, or where we would like them to be, to preserve the union is like . . . as he says in the title: “Impossible.”
Anyone actually wanting the job must be a masochist, or an egomaniac – or, more likely, both. Either that or such a blind idealist he/she is unaware of the anguish he/she is asking for.
I’m sure glad I became a writer again. It’s a much more sensible job. I suspect you agree.
