To the Editor:
I know that most of you don’t care what I want, but these are things that all Americans should want in their president. I know it’s long, but bear with it.
I want a president that pays his fair share of taxes and doesn’t think that those who do are suckers.
I want a president that doesn’t respond to every contrary idea with ignorance and character/source assassination, but with logical arguments.
I want a president that doesn’t make $350+M and counting in emoluments from the U.S. taxpayer (not including foreign sources) to bail him out of his $450+M hole.
I want a president who doesn’t kiss up to international despots because they flatter him, have dirt on him, or he owes them money.
I want a president who doesn’t, through inaction, ignorance, false bravado, denial and just plain incompetence exacerbate an international pandemic killing probably 200,000 more people and counting (the worst record of all 1st, 2nd and 3rd world countries).
I want a president who doesn’t provoke right wing violence, who doesn’t tear gas peaceful protestors to surreally stand in front of a church he’s never been inside of waving a bible he’s never read.
I want a president who doesn’t try to get rid of everything (good or bad) that Obama did just because it was Obama, who doesn’t call the military losers and suckers because they joined up instead of claiming “bone spurs” to avoid the draft and who doesn’t let his “buddies” put bounties on the troops he has in harm’s way.
I want a president who doesn’t cheat each and every chance he gets, who doesn’t think that every transaction is an “I win, you lose” transaction.
I want a president who doesn’t appoint toadying fools to key positions to pervert justice and the functioning of our legitimate institutions.
I want a president who does believe in science and the human impact on the environment, who does try to unite us as a people against common problems (COVID-19, environment, racism, etc.).
I want a president that doesn’t think the answer to the problem of too many guns on the street can be solved by more guns on the street.
I want a president that learns from his mistakes, not doubles down on them.
I want a president that doesn’t always blame the victims of violence (police or otherwise) for what happened to them.
I want a president that understands that the rapid increase in natural disasters all over the world is a result of climate change, not the mismanagement of the 3 percent of the forests that California actually owns and manages (compared to the 57+ percent federally owned and managed by the U.S. Forestry Service). I know that is way too much to ask of this clown. I know that it is “unpresidential” of me to be calling him names, but that’s never stopped him before. And besides, I’m not the president.
I would truly like to have a president that doesn’t stoop so low as to demean and character assassinate (“she needs anger management”) a 13-year-old climate activist because the facts she puts forth clash with his self-serving and limited world view.
I want a president that doesn’t blame Joe Biden for the current level of violence on his own watch. Notice how it is always the Democratic governors, never the Republican governors, who get blamed for the rioting and violence in their states.
How’s this for something a president should do? How about acting like our allies are our allies and not our enemies, and vice versa. International accords are just that, international agreements that are painfully negotiated for the mutual benefit of the signatories. Our president should be respected for building upon and improving our agreements, not unilaterally destroying them when he finds something inconvenient, or to make a misguided point.
How about not undermining the military and the peace negotiations by “ordering” troop withdrawals “by Christmas” in the hopes of getting a few more votes from hopeful and homesick soldiers? True cynicism.
I want a president that isn’t so cynically corrupted that he tacitly backs a Presidential run by a man with known mental and bipolar disorders on the off chance that it’ll drain a few black votes from Biden. This is our constitutional and cultural champion!
I want a president that doesn’t think that honor, honesty, integrity, morals and values are fungible commodities to be modified and exchanged for his personal benefit.
And, first and foremost, I want a president that puts America’s interests ahead of his own.
A chauvinistic, narcissistic, ignorant, self-aggrandizing fool as president is much worse than a potentially incompetent one. I want a president a sister could love. How’s that for a litmus test?
Art Cavaliere
Village of St. Charles
