Americans, especially rich ones, have a grand tradition of thinking they can do politics better than the politicians. Usually they discover the game is more difficult than it looks, although some last longer in the arena than others. Ross Perot and Herman Cain — computer and pizza magnates, respectively — both had good runs, for example. On Monday, the latest entrants in this category, a former corporate executive and a former surgeon, both posted videos, which seems to be the 2015 method of declaring for president.
The former CEO, Carly Fiorina, is best known for her time running computer maker Hewlett-Packard. When she lost her job there 10 years ago, the company’s stock soared 6.9 percent. Her major initiative had been a merger with Compaq, “a big bet that didn’t pay off, that didn’t even come close to attaining what Fiorina and HP’s board said was in store,” as Fortune’s Carol J. Loomis reported in 2005. “At bottom, they made a huge error.” Fiorina also has a losing U.S. Senate race in California on her résumé.
Ben Carson has less executive experience, which we suppose in this case might be seen as a relative advantage. He has won a conservative following with often incendiary remarks, such as likening the United States to Nazi Germany: “You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe. And it’s because of the PC police, it’s because of politicians, it’s because of news.”
He called Obamacare the “worst thing to have happened in this nation since slavery.” Carson also said that the proof that homosexuality is a choice is that “a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight and when they come out they’re gay.”
For all that, both candidates are capable people who have impressed on the pre-declaration stump. What especially unites them is a contempt for what Fiorina, in her declaration video, dismissed as the “professional political class.” She promised to stand up against “the sound bites, the vitriol, the pettiness, the egos, the corruption … identity politics … lowered expectations.”
We are as tired of tired sound bites as the next voter, but we would suggest there’s a reason that neither major party has nominated a nonpolitician since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 or, if you don’t count him, Wendell Willkie in 1940.
Politics is a difficult and, we’d argue, honorable profession. It is easy to disparage public servants, much harder to reshape the forces pushing them away from solutions (money-raising pressure, partisan redistricting, etc.), and harder still to fashion compromise without abandoning principle.
As of now, Fiorina and Carson are politicians on the national stage; we look forward to seeing what they can do.
Editorial by The Washington Post
Send questions/comments to the editors.
