I feel that it is important for the president to have some prior political experience with proven accomplishments. Governor, Senator, Congressman, Lieutenant Governor, State Senator, State Congressmen, etc. Fiorina, Carson and Trump are lacking.
As for Washington he headed the Constitutional Convention -- neither Fiorina, Carson or Trump from what I know have any vast knowledge of the Constitution or Constitutional law nor have they been lawyers. Lincoln served as a Congressman before becoming president. Again, neither Fiorina, Carson or Trump have even held a seat in the state senate or in a state house of representatives nor a seat in the U.S. senate or U.S. House of Representatives. I feel it is an important qualification for becoming president.
Business is politics. Every company I worked for was political. It's internal, but it's no different than what happens anywhere else. In some ways, it's more critical to deal with because it can affect the success of the company.
In government if you waste money and do stupid shit, argue about every little thing, take forever to get things done, the same amount of money comes in. If a department or committee goes over budget, gets their budget done long after their arbitrary date has gone by or doesn't even bother to submit one, it's just business as usual. If the president and congress don't agree it just goes back and forth. Need a new treasury secretary? Doesn't matter whether they're the best person for the job, there's not even an interview process between more than one candidate, he or she is generally rubber stamped out of "courtesy".
Arbitrarily cut critical budget like the military or downsize or use it as a social experiment, if it affects that department negatively there are rarely consequences for the department heads or the CEO (president). The only people affected are the citizens and the consequences aren't felt until long after that president is gone.
Your department loses a few million dollars? Oh well, politicians will give lip service to it but no one gets fired and no attempt is made to find out what happened to it. Government employees don't lose their jobs, money continues to flow and departments don't close or lay people off leaving 100's, even 1,000's of people out of a job. A scandal, like what's happening at the veterans administration? We'll look into it, there are committee hearings, maybe the president sends someone out to look at the books but there's rarely any real change. There's not even a real firing process. Lois Lerner, retired with a full pension. A congressman or senator gets voted out, they retire with a full pension. This is true and both the state and federal level.
In a private company, any one of those things can affect a company negatively, cost workers their jobs, even cause the company to go out of business. A department head doesn't watch his department's budget, that affects profits, which affects employees, shareholders, R&D and consumer pricing. A department loses the kind of money the government does and they'd be out the door the next day. Even a critical area that doesn't get enough funds could have the same consequences. CEO's, owners, executive heads of departments, they screw up or just don't bother doing their jobs and there are very real consequences. The decisions Ben Carson had to make were literally life and death. People in the public sector don't learn critical lessons from their mistakes because they don't have to.
That's not to say there aren't eminently qualified politicians running, my first 3 choices are politicians. But I'm not going to discount someone who isn't in politics because they deal with the same situations but with real life consequences. We're really lucky this year to have such a deep bench, almost all with excellent credentials to be president.
Cindie
