Peter Baker: Why would any one want to be president?
... What is it about the psyche of would-be presidents that makes them wake up in the morning and think it would be gratifying to take on the troubles of the world, to assume responsibility for the lives of 300 million Americans at a time when their lives are so precarious?
And particularly now, in this moment of maximum crisis. Millions are in danger of losing their homes. Hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs. The national debt is skyrocketing. The Taliban is rampaging through Afghanistan. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed shambles. The country is still at war in Iraq and trying to avoid it with Iran and North Korea. Russia has invaded a neighbor. And much of the world hates us.
“This is an unprecedented mess,” said Ted Sorensen, the former counselor to President John F. Kennedy. By many measures, no incoming president will have inherited quite such a sack of trouble in decades. Yet neither Mr. Obama nor Senator John McCain has expressed second thoughts.
“You have to not only have a sense of confidence but a pretty big ego — you have to almost be a fanatic,” Mr. Sorensen said. “You have to look at yourself and everybody else running for the office and think not only are you as good as they are but you and your ideas are better.”
And that you can fix what nobody else can fix. The ambition and drive that propel politicians to high office at a time of tribulations may convince them that the country’s deep problems are simply successes waiting to happen.
“Part of self-confidence is believing you have special gifts and how selfish of you not to use them to full capacity,” said Alvin S. Felzenberg, a University of Pennsylvania scholar and author of “The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t).” “It’s not a job for ordinary mortals. It may have been fairer in the Middle Ages to have them walk over hot coals than what we put them through now.”...
Read entire article at NYT
And particularly now, in this moment of maximum crisis. Millions are in danger of losing their homes. Hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs. The national debt is skyrocketing. The Taliban is rampaging through Afghanistan. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed shambles. The country is still at war in Iraq and trying to avoid it with Iran and North Korea. Russia has invaded a neighbor. And much of the world hates us.
“This is an unprecedented mess,” said Ted Sorensen, the former counselor to President John F. Kennedy. By many measures, no incoming president will have inherited quite such a sack of trouble in decades. Yet neither Mr. Obama nor Senator John McCain has expressed second thoughts.
“You have to not only have a sense of confidence but a pretty big ego — you have to almost be a fanatic,” Mr. Sorensen said. “You have to look at yourself and everybody else running for the office and think not only are you as good as they are but you and your ideas are better.”
And that you can fix what nobody else can fix. The ambition and drive that propel politicians to high office at a time of tribulations may convince them that the country’s deep problems are simply successes waiting to happen.
“Part of self-confidence is believing you have special gifts and how selfish of you not to use them to full capacity,” said Alvin S. Felzenberg, a University of Pennsylvania scholar and author of “The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t).” “It’s not a job for ordinary mortals. It may have been fairer in the Middle Ages to have them walk over hot coals than what we put them through now.”...