Perhaps the most dangerous lie we were told when we were growing up was this - that anyone could grow up to be President.
When I was a kid, there was a clause that accompanied that statement. It may have been unstated, but it was assumed.
Anyone could grow up to be President - IF YOU DID THE WORK.
That clause has vanished.
The result is a growing number of elected individuals with absolutely no understanding of how government works or what the job of a Member of Congress is. Or a President. Or a Secretary of State. Or a school board member.
There are millions of Americans who believe the sole qualification for elected office is a big mouth.
We may blame Donald Trump who managed to hoodwink nearly half of the national electorate in 2016. (Nearly half - because he did lose the popular vote.) But the phenomenon goes back further - to a half-term governor and hockey mom who couldn’t name a national newspaper if you put one in front of her.
Yes, I am talking about Sarah Palin.
She created the template for the uneducated yet attractive candidate - one whom voters think sounds like them. They don’t care that this kind of candidate has no idea of how government is structured. They don’t care that such a candidate may not even have a high school degree. They care that they would feel good having a beer with this candidate.
So we got Donald Trump. And Lauren Boebert, who only got a GED because her backers insisted - and who married a registered sex offender who had exposed himself to a minor in a bowling alley. Or Paul Gosar, whose siblings used their own money to pay for TV ads opposing his campaign. Or Marjorie Taylor Green, who can’t seem to distinguish between the Gestapo and gazpacho. Or Tom Cotton, who lied about being an Army Ranger.
We are better than this.
We have highly educated, experienced elected officials who have actually done the work to earn elected office. We have Constitutional scholar and professor Jamie Raskin. And Ivy-League educated Barack Obama. And Hillary Clinton, considered to be the best-prepared Presidential candidate since Thomas Jefferson. And what Cory Booker (himself no slouch) called “double Harvard” Kentanji Brown Jackson, whom even Republicans agree is stunningly qualified for a seat on the Supreme Court (even if they won’t vote for her).
What happened to quality? What happened to valuing education?
And in the words of Velma Kelly and Matron “Mama” Morton - whatever happened to class?