Why do people aspire to such positions as

[OhioBlue]

President of the US or other high-ranking government offices? It's like hoping someday to be called as a bishop or stake president, times about 200.

I mean, look at how our nation supports our leaders in the last several decades. It's crazy.

Currently we have GWB, who during his jaunt through Oval Office history gets to take on tower-toppling airplanes and a huge loss in the collective feeling of safety. Then he has to make tough decisions about what might be the right thing to do in Iraq. And put up with the aftermath. Not to mention a little hurricane in New Orleans.

I mean, we can all agree about the corruption in certain aspects of government, the self-serving and pursuit of power and economic gain. But you can't convince me that a Clinton or a Bush, when it came right down to it, did not endeavor to serve their country and do the best damn job they could do. Can you imagine the nights of introspection, of self-questioning? The fortitude needed to make unpopular decisions even when your heart tells you it's the right thing? And I'm not even talking about whether it ends up being the 'right' thing or not, however that's being defined these days.

And then to turn around and have millions of fingers constantly pointing your direction--all of these fingers having the benefit of the one thing you never got to have: hindsight. A job where everything bad is attributed to you, in color, on the front page....while anything good you've accomplished is ignored, attributed to others, or at best begrudgingly acknowledged in footnotes.

We are a country that punishes our leaders for what are deemed errors exponentially more vociferously than it builds up, hopes for, encourages, and provides support to the same. I honestly don't know if we'll ever see any differently in our lifetimes--and it's likely to get worse.

When I stop and think about this with a wider perspective, quite honestly it saddens me.

[creekster]

Originally Posted by OhioBlue

President of the US or other high-ranking government offices? It's like hoping someday to be called as a bishop or stake president, times about 200.

I mean, look at how our nation supports our leaders in the last several decades. It's crazy.

Currently we have GWB, who during his jaunt through Oval Office history gets to take on tower-toppling airplanes and a huge loss in the collective feeling of safety. Then he has to make tough decisions about what might be the right thing to do in Iraq. And put up with the aftermath. Not to mention a little hurricane in New Orleans.

I mean, we can all agree about the corruption in certain aspects of government, the self-serving and pursuit of power and economic gain. But you can't convince me that a Clinton or a Bush, when it came right down to it, did not endeavor to serve their country and do the best damn job they could do. Can you imagine the nights of introspection, of self-questioning? The fortitude needed to make unpopular decisions even when your heart tells you it's the right thing? And I'm not even talking about whether it ends up being the 'right' thing or not, however that's being defined these days.

And then to turn around and have millions of fingers constantly pointing your direction--all of these fingers having the benefit of the one thing you never got to have: hindsight. A job where everything bad is attributed to you, in color, on the front page....while anything good you've accomplished is ignored, attributed to others, or at best begrudgingly acknowledged in footnotes.

We are a country that punishes our leaders for what are deemed errors exponentially more vociferously than it builds up, hopes, encourages, and provides support to the same. I honestly don't know if we'll ever see any differently in our lifetimes--and it's likely to get worse.

When I stop and think about this with a wider perspective, quite honestly it saddens me.

I am not so sure that those guys are nearly as introspective as you might imagine. Within in my very limited experience, the introspective ones end up like Carter; most of the rest don't second guess themselves too much. In fact, that is why they are willing to pursue the job, becasue they always think they can do somethign great, they have no regrets about anything and so why not them?