loquitur

Roachboy, part of it is that I prefer someone with a record that shows how s/he has been tested and used his/her judgment. Let me give you an example, using someone who is no longer running for President. As I've mentioned before, I live in NYC. In 1993 I was certain that if David Dinkins were re-elected there would be no NYC four years on. That was the very first time I ever donated money to a political campaign, and I donated it to Giuliani. From my perspective, Giuliani's first term was an amazing success. I happily voted for him for re-election - whereupon he promptly became a raving lunatic, and remained a lunatic until 9/11/01, when he suddenly became a giant again. But no sooner did the shock wore off than he became a lunatic again, proposing that he remain mayor past the end of his term. My conclusion about Giuliani was this: he is a terrific crisis manager and leader. But if there is no crisis, he is so activist and driven that he starts creating crises and doing crazy things just to keep his outsized personality satisfied. As NYC mayor that meant some disturbing actual and attempted breaches of civil liberties. But there are limits to how authoritarian a mere mayor can be; after all, the biggest weapon a mayor has is the police dept. But Giuliani would have been a disaster as President precisely because there would have been much less institutional constraint on his authoritarian tendencies. So - even though on a lot of issues I agreed with him (pro-choice, pro-gay, economic-growth-oriented) - I could never support him for president, precisely because of character issues.

And yes, I think the course of the Bush administration has been a direct result of GWB's character, both his strengths and weaknesses - which in some cases are the same attributes. He is an object lesson of why we shouldn't keep the presidency in families - there is too much family baggage that gets imported into the equation. GWB spent way too much time trying to avoid being his father, and he's not a flexible enough thinker to see the pitfalls of following his instincts.

This does have implications for a Hillary presidency. But she is a much more disciplined person and a much more flexible thinker than GWB. I happen to admire her quite a bit, but she will need to actively combat the tendency (which likely will be prevalent among her retinue) to think of a Hillary presidency as a Clinton restoration. It can't be.