In President Biden’s press conference last night, he mentioned several times he was the most “qualified" person for the job.
In many ways, of course, there is no denying that the President’s prodigious career has given him tremendous experience and an institutional memory of how Washington has worked for years. None of that should be minimized or denied, and any president going forward would be a fool not to ask President Biden's counsel on a variety of issues.
But the most qualified person at this moment is less an expert at knowing how things were done in the past, and more an expert at envisioning - and executing - a different kind of future. |
The next president must articulate a vision of possibility and progress. Americans are hardwired for greatness and yearn to be called to great things; that is our legacy, our collective memory. The most qualified leader today will help inspire a new era for our country and our world.
The most qualified person, for instance, will do more than preside over war if she feels it necessary; indeed, she will wage peace.
She will envision a world without war in a hundred years and reverse engineer from there. A Department of Peace will be as important as the Pentagon. An army of peace builders will be as important as an army of military personnel. As many resources will be applied to preventing war as are now applied to waging it.
It’s not enough to be qualified to perpetuate the system as it is. Rather, what we need today is someone qualified to wisely and responsibly disrupt that system, to help the United States forge a new path forward. We are living our lives in the 21st Century, while too much of our politics in mired in the 20th.
The issue is not old body versus young body, but rather old-think versus new-think. The most qualified person to be president today is both respectful of what has been, and deeply devoted to the birth of a much better world.
In a word, I’m the most qualified person to be president. If the president decides to step down, let’s make it so… |
If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately: |