U.S. Election Process

We’re going to have to stop nominating our leaders as if we were doing it through Central Casting. We seek out the candidate with the nicest smile, with the most “sincere” countenance, with the quickest wit and the most mesmerizing patter. We swallow the most banal generalities, shunning that candidate who, in his own sense of forthrightness, tells us of the hard road ahead. Instead, we embrace the one who makes stupid promises that we know he either cannot, or won’t, keep.

We should place higher values on a man’s wisdom than on his charisma; more value on his common sense than political fencing skills; more confidence in his ability to look far down the road than in his promises of momentary relief.

Only when we can take this approach will we be able to, once more, seize the American Dream, escape the quagmire of “politics as usual” and move forward in the domestic and foreign arenas of our world.

TED KARROS, Upland