Fantasy Government?

I was reading an interesting posting on someone else’s blog the other day about fantasy sports and how someone should put together a fantasy government league where people can build governments with certain politicians and other public figures. One would then track the success of these “fantasy governments” by the success of the various leaders.

This is, of course, absurd. You can’t measure the capabilities of a political leader in a hypothetical world. It is like saying that Al Gore would have handled the aftermath of 9/11 better than George W. Bush, or John Kerry would have handled the Hurricane relief efforts in the Gulf States better. You can say it, but only if you acknowledge how ludicrous you really sound.

One would like to believe that Al Gore would have been more level headed in the aftermath of 9/11, that he would not have gotten all Walker, Texas Ranger on us, but can anyone say that with certainty? I was pretty upset after 9/11. I was able to restrain my response after the terrorist attacks because I really have no power and no ability to do anything about anything. George W. Bush reacted, in part, in response to our great national blood thirst for revenge.

In addition, it seems logical that John Kerry would have had a more pragmatic and systematic approach to responding to natural disasters like the recent Hurricanes that struck the Southeastern United States, but are we sure of that? Would you bet your life on it? Is there anyone out there who knows for sure that John Kerry would have been his Navy Swift Boat self, charging up onto the beaches and chasing the Viet-Cong into the jungle, or would he have been Senator Kerry, voting for relief before voting against it? I believe the G.I. John would have showed up but have no evidence to support that hypothesis.

Hindsight is always 20/20. There is never any ambiguity about what needed to be done after someone has shown us how not to handle a situation. They say that we learn more from our mistakes then we do from our successes. If that is the case, George W. Bush is going to be smarter than Einstein by the time he leaves office. He has almost turned “fucking up” into an art form. Perhaps he should apply for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts before he has it eliminated to pay for bullets in Iraq.

All that being said, who would you want to run this country? I am asking for creative thinking here. I don’t want to hear: Joe Biden or Bill Frist. If you lived in a perfect world, who would be President of the United States? Also, I don’t want to hear Bill Clinton, no people term-limited out of office. The person has to be alive, but not necessarily an American citizen.

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