"Winners always want the ball... when the game is on the line."
I was just thinking about the bounty of excellent presidential candidates we have this go round. Maybe once or twice in my long liberal life have I seen such a strong field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination (both 1988 and 2004 produced bumper crops). I expect soon enough I'll figure out who I will actively support for the nomination, but I don't particularly feel the need just yet.
I heard a coworker complaining about this today in the lunchroom. He considers it a mad rush of egos, "typical politicians all caught up in their careers and ambitions" he said, "and not putting the country first." He thinks some of them need to step aside and maybe defer to some senior party leader we can "all get behind" for just this election. He's worried that we'll "be too divided" to take on Trump in November 2020 after a drawn out primary season. But I'm not worried about that at all. I think our coming arguments are our strength. I think we need to kick the tires on every car in this beautiful lot before we make a choice. Personally I'm going to need a few seasons to see who the strongest candidate is... and that takes time.
And I'm not in the least concerned that whoever we nominate will just be a big strong egoist, just a pretty show horse who flatters the crowd the best. But more importantly, having a competitive will to win is a critical personality feature. The job they're going for requires a strong ego as well as a vision for the country's destiny. A president has to make so damn many decisions, you can't have a dithering Hamlet in the Oval. You need someone possessed of moral rectitude and operational certainty as much as you need someone who's philosophically solid but operationally flexible. This is exactly the time to field test our candidates in the coming months. I want to see each of their characters under pressure. The goal here is to have one of them live under pressure for 8 years.
And ambitious is a good thing. Frankly, you need someone who's ambitious in the job; someone who's audaciously ambitious, even. As a country we need to take on great tasks in coming decade--operating a government that's been swamped with debt and somehow paying for all the programs we need, from retooling our workforce for the rest of the century to getting off fossil fuels to meeting the threat of growing autocracy overseas to expanding wealth inequality to managing the coming global environmental melt down that we were unable to avoid in the early years of this century.
To paraphrase Gene Hackman from The Replacements, the Big Game is on the line. I'm encouraged by all the talented leaders who are stepping forward and demanding "Give me the ball, Coach." It tells me that we have more to hope for than to fear. America got kicked in the nuts just over two years ago--and really we sorta kicked ourselves in the nuts by allowing a foreign tyrant to use our own stupid against us and promote a egomaniacal nutcake into the presidency. The situation is sobering, daunting even, but we can only overcome these approaching crises if we have an ambitious leader who can charge us up to go out and fight for the survival of our civilization. And frankly, civilization itself is the Big Game that's on the line.
I'll pray for this country and this party, which is the only party that can save it now. I truly believe we'll win this and that it will be exhilarating.