US Presidential Candidates

biochem wrote:

Daryl wrote:One thing that I have trouble understanding is the caliber of the candidates. The US has 200m plus people, despite jokes about education the people must be better educated than the majority of countries, first world communication systems, brilliant people who invent computer systems and spaceships; yet look at the standard of candidates from both sides over the past few elections. The brighter ones seem to be sidelined early in many cases.

yep. It's especially bad with the Dems this year.

I almost choked on my orange juice when I read that sentence, thanks a lot.


1. Donald. Trump. Leading. GOP. Polls.

2. The rest of the field is hardly even any better. They're less flamboyantly embarrassing to the nation in their rhetoric (well, mostly anyway) but the entire GOP primary debate process has been a circus.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016 ... l-security

Robert Gates: Republicans' grasp of national security is at a child's level

"“The level of dialogue on national security issues would embarrass a middle schooler,” Gates said of the Republican contenders at a Politico Playbook event in Washington on Monday. “People are out there making threats and promises that are totally unrealistic, totally unattainable. Either they really believe what they’re saying or they’re cynical and opportunistic and, in a way, you hope it’s the latter, because God forbid they actually believe some of the things that they’re saying.”

If I could design a perfect candidate (leaving ideology out of it). I would design him/her to be all of the following:

1. A governor (governors are the closest thing to president, so good job training)
2. High IQ
3. High EQ
4. At least 4 years of active duty military experience and some combat zone experience (the president is commander and chief, The perfect president should have at least some personal concept of what that means)
5. Some experience doing something notable outside of the government
6. Accomplished something notable in government

Generally agreed, although #4 can be a mixed thing. It depends how they came through that experience, extended time in a combat zone can skew your view of the world in unfortunate ways.

I'll refrain from pointing at certain specific examples on this very board.

biochem wrote:

Daryl wrote:One thing that I have trouble understanding is the caliber of the candidates. The US has 200m plus people, despite jokes about education the people must be better educated than the majority of countries, first world communication systems, brilliant people who invent computer systems and spaceships; yet look at the standard of candidates from both sides over the past few elections. The brighter ones seem to be sidelined early in many cases.

yep. It's especially bad with the Dems this year. The better candidates weren't even running!

If I could design a perfect candidate (leaving ideology out of it). I would design him/her to be all of the following:

1. A governor (governors are the closest thing to president, so good job training)
2. High IQ
3. High EQ
4. At least 4 years of active duty military experience and some combat zone experience (the president is commander and chief, The perfect president should have at least some personal concept of what that means)
5. Some experience doing something notable outside of the government
6. Accomplished something notable in government

[quote=Russel Kirk] The conservative … acts only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences…Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery… The march of providence is slow; it is the devil who always hurries.[/quote]

Of course, many say they are conservative who also don't think things thru. Ditto for liberals. (My wife says the political liberals of today are very liberal in spending OUR money)

I read that some years back, New Zealand managed to have a large cutback in government spending. Any NZs out there who can point us to any site(s) with details

biochem wrote:Those sorts of surveys/interviews etc are very difficult to conduct properly. It's not socially acceptable to have such a bias, so often what you wind up measuring is not the level of prejudice but 1) people's willingness to admit to it or 2) people's self knowledge.

Which in this case would mean that reality is WORSE than what the results showed.

biochem wrote:The one type of test that I like the best is the implicit bias surveys. That is where the take the same resume/application etc etc and send out 2 copies one with a male name, one with a female. I tend to like this type of study because it picks up both conscious and subconscious biases and it's less susceptible to people's unwillingness to admit it.

Lots of that kind has been done over the years. And it nearly always shows clear differences across the world.

The "worst" one i´ve read was probably where they had teachers from various nations grade test results.

Lo and behold, a majority of teachers graded science and math tests lower if the name was female. Even when the test results were identical.

But again, regional differences were obvious.

Amusingly(or not), that one showed USA as over twice as bad as places like Iran and Turkey.

IIRC, Japan was the only place getting even close to "neutral".

biochem wrote:Incidentally, in the USA almost always the male resume/application will get more positive responses than the female one even from female respondents. So there is still prejudice, however it is a vast improvement over a generation ago where people could be openly biased.

Is it really an improvement when people vehemently claim no bias, and then goes and clearly shows bias in their actions?

Worse still is that USA has such a strong and inherently stable culturally based bias.
It´s totally NOT hip to even consider genders as close to equal there.

Like for example, it´s just "normal" to even separate what sports are available in school according to gender? That´s just totally weird to me who doesn´t have that cultural bias.

biochem wrote:In Hilary's case the problem seems to be not so much that she is female but that

Female is almost guaranteed to be a much bigger part of the reason than you think.

biochem wrote:1) She is seen as untrustworthy

2) She is part of the establishment in a non-establishment year

3) She doesn't have the charisma of a natural politician

1. She´s not a classical housewife and she has openly had a messed up marriage, of course she can´t be trustworthy.

2. Yeah, through her husband...

3. Well of course not, she´s a woman past her prime, not sexy enough.

I´m obviously being sarcastic above, but there´s sadly far too much truth in it as well.

biochem wrote:1. A governor (governors are the closest thing to president, so good job training)
2. High IQ
3. High EQ
4. At least 4 years of active duty military experience and some combat zone experience (the president is commander and chief, The perfect president should have at least some personal concept of what that means)
5. Some experience doing something notable outside of the government
6. Accomplished something notable in government

The only truly important one of those is actually #6. Because that´s the one showing that s/he is capable of getting things done inside the system.

And military experience, too often that actually is a negative for administrative service. If the experience was as a logistics, stafftrained or maybe C4 specialist, then it´s often a good thing, but there´s not many of those compared to the total.

Daryl wrote:One thing that I have trouble understanding is the caliber of the candidates. The US has 200m plus people, despite jokes about education the people must be better educated than the majority of countries, first world communication systems, brilliant people who invent computer systems and spaceships; yet look at the standard of candidates from both sides over the past few elections. The brighter ones seem to be sidelined early in many cases.

"must be"? Why?

If you want to find GOOD education today, you look at Finland. If you can settle for functional, S.Korea and Japan are good showpoints.

My own country is much too far from the quality of Finland, but at the same time it´s also far from the lack of quality of USA.

And it´s not that all education in USA sucks, far from it, the problem is similar to the healthcare however, there are some great schools around, but the vast majority of students attend schools that are horribly much worse.

So, USA simply does not have 320+ million of well educated people, it has maybe 10-20M of very well educated, another 20-40M decently ok, and the rest have far too often been given an education that would be unacceptably lousy anywhere but a 3rd world country or a refugee camp.

And it get weirder still, because USA actually have a better curriculum in some places than for example my own country(math language for example), yet despite that, it is normal in USA for 16-18 year olds to learn stuff that we here get before we´re 15.

I first noticed this very blatantly when i was helping a US girl online with some math homework, i repeatedly had to go check words for precise meaning, yet the actual problems she was getting as an 18 year old, was similar to what I got when i was 13-14.

So a really weird disconnect there.

first world communication systems, brilliant people who invent computer systems and spaceships

Actually, if you want to be crass about it, why don´t you try to look at USA and technology pre WWII and post WWII?
That should tell you a VERY interesting story.

Simple fact is that USAs success in technology is based almost completely on the British(and to a smaller extent French/Dutch/Belgian) tech transfers to USA during WWII.


AND, on the forced tech transfers(including a lot of people) from Japan and Germany after WWII.

Computers and electronics? USA was behind even USSR in the 30s. And even the German electromechanical computers were decades ahead of USAs research in the area.

Huge tech projects, especially like the spacerace, brought together techs and then generated lots of side benefits that could be commercialised, but once you stop that kind of thing, and the imported tech getting too unimportant and disjointed from its modern successors, USA is now having to rely on immigrants along with that much smaller part of well educated people and the rare few people that manage regardless of education.

Essentially, innovation and techwise, USA is a nation of 20-40M, not 322M.

If you look at technology innovation and discount the massive government based programs(ie, focus on what people comes up with "unbidden", essentially creativity), suddenly my country of 10M is amazingly close to USA, despite less than 1/30th the population.

DDHvi wrote:[quote=Russel Kirk] The conservative … acts only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences…Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery… The march of providence is slow; it is the devil who always hurries.

[/quote]

That´s neither true about conservatives nor in regards to politics and reality.

The F-35 project shows off the conservative style above, and it´s a frickin disaster of unholy proportions.

If you want to get something done without costing the moon, you make it get done quickly once you decided.

Enemies of Oligarchs, Unite!

I hereby call on any republican who simply cannot vote for Trump to vote Sanders in the primary. Trump has enough rabid supporters to get the nomination. No other candidate can galvanize the remaining electorate to stop him. The only remaining oligarch candidate with a chance is Clinton the crook.

So if you truly can't stomach Trump don't waste your vote! Vote Sanders and kill our oligarch's last hope at retaking power. If those are our candidates, both parties' establishments will be in disarray and subject to meaningful change.

PeterZ wrote:Enemies of Oligarchs, Unite!

I hereby call on any republican who simply cannot vote for Trump to vote Sanders in the primary. Trump has enough rabid supporters to get the nomination. No other candidate can galvanize the remaining electorate to stop him. The only remaining oligarch candidate with a chance is Clinton the crook.

So if you truly can't stomach Trump don't waste your vote! Vote Sanders and kill our oligarch's last hope at retaking power. If those are our candidates, both parties' establishments will be in disarray and subject to meaningful change.

That, actually makes a degree of sense.

Interesting I'm starting to see some buzz about a behind the scenes deal. Rubio & Cruz & the establishment combine forces to defeat Trump's hostile takeover of the Republican party. Rubio gets the presidential nomination and if he wins Cruz get's Scalia's seat with the establishment guaranteeing that they'll back both men. (Pause while gcomeau's head explodes at the thought of Justice Cruz)

I wonder if they'll pull it off.

biochem wrote:Interesting I'm starting to see some buzz about a behind the scenes deal. Rubio & Cruz & the establishment combine forces to defeat Trump's hostile takeover of the Republican party. Rubio gets the presidential nomination and if he wins Cruz get's Scalia's seat with the establishment guaranteeing that they'll back both men. (Pause while gcomeau's head explodes at the thought of Justice Cruz)

Ha!

It might have, if I thought there was any possibility of a Justice Cruz even if they did try to make this deal work. Cruz is so universally despised that even with a GOP Senate they'd never approve him even if Rubio was insane enough to nominate him.

FFS, the other day Lindsey Graham said, and I quote "If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,"

The Dems wouldn't even have to filibuster the nomination. It would just... die.

In related news, I almost felt sorry for Christie watching him standing behind Trump with that expression on his face on Tuesday... then I remembered he brought it on himself and got over it.