What should we be looking for in choosing the next president of the United States? I would like to suggest a perspective that, in my view, significantly emphasizes the importance of presidential elections in this part of the 21st century by comparing the scope of the position of president today to the job of president in Washington’s administration, just after the ratification of the Constitution.
What is remarkable is that the government that we have today is essentially the same government established by our Constitution in 1788, but the complexity of governing this country has increased by orders of magnitude. When the Constitution was established, the population of the United States was fewer than 4 million people; today it is 305 million. The number of states, of course, has grown from 13 to 50.
The speed of both transportation and communications over land were determined by how fast a horse could run, and over water by how long it would take a sailing vessel to cover the required distance. Today one can travel from New York to Paris within a business day and to Hong Kong in slightly less than a 24-hour day, while it is commonplace to communicate from a room in New York City with people in any of the major cities of the world as simply as carrying on a conversation with a colleague sitting across the table.
In 1790, oil was not yet used for anything but medicinal purposes. Electricity was not in use. There were fewer than 1 billion people on the Earth compared to 6.7 billion today. The Industrial Revolution had just started and was not really felt for 40 more years; thus, with fewer than a billion people on the planet, symptoms of intrusions on the natural environment were not yet seen.
In the late 18th century, the federal government of the executive, legislative, and judicial departments governed a small country in a land rich in resources and relatively isolated from most of the rest of the world by a large ocean to the East and a huge landmass to the West. Today that same government, with its executive department still headed by one person, is responsible for a country that is more than 75 times the original population and almost 4 times as many states, that is functioning in a leadership role in a global economy, with global terrorist threats, global intelligence and security structures, and the need for global efforts to contain global environmental challenges. While more and more, a decision to take a particular action in one area has significant side effects in other areas.
Today’s world situation and the United States’ role within it is so complex, that it takes a very bright and well-educated president to be able to grasp the importance of each issue that is presented to him or her and to have a good feel for the near-term and long-term consequences of possible approaches. In addition to a high intelligence capacity, a good president also needs a good dose of common sense and good instincts so that this person at the head of the executive branch is also aware of any detrimental practical results of an idea that otherwise looks great on paper.
In my view, such a specially qualified person, who is also willing to endure the extraordinary effort that it takes to get elected, is very rare and probably only comes onto the national scene once every several generations. After carefully listening to most of the recent Democratic National Convention and all three presidential debates, I firmly believe that Barack Obama is such a person.
I have been an independent all of my life, and I have never been active in politics at either the local or national level. However, I believe so strongly that in November we have such a unique opportunity that I am writing this because I believe that we must take advantage of this opportunity and elect Barack Obama our next president.
Charles F. “Chick” Rauch of Glenburn is a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral and vice president emeritus of the University of Maine.
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