I was enjoying a perfectly adequate mimosa at Cafe Milano with a former undersecretary of state when Sen. John Kennedy appeared on the television above the bar. The Louisiana Republican was doing his usual routine on Meet the Press, deploying his carefully focus-grouped folksiness to a national audience. When asked if he might seek the White House, he mused that if a "bunch of goobers" entered the race, he might consider it. "Why not me on a rainy day?" he asked the host. My dining companion scoffed at the flippancy. But I set down my crystal flute, motioned for the server to bring us another round of imported sparkling water, and realized I was witnessing a moment of profound political bravery.
For far too long, we have demanded that our presidential candidates possess a burning, lifelong ambition to lead the free world. We expect them to have comprehensive policy platforms, a deep understanding of macroeconomic theory, and a genuine desire to serve the public. But why? This exhausting standard has only given us decades of disappointed expectations and a populace that insists on being involved in the process. Kennedy is offering us something remarkably refreshing: the promise of a commander-in-chief who views the executive branch as something to tinker with when the weather ruins a perfectly good weekend.
Let's be honest. The daily administration of a superpower is mostly administrative drudgery anyway. I recently sat next to a prominent K Street lobbyist on a chartered flight back from Davos, and over a rather dry sea bass, he confessed that the actual direction of the country is handled entirely by unelected deputies and corporate benefactors. The president is essentially a mascot who occasionally signs things for the cameras. If the job is merely ceremonial, why shouldn't it go to a man who treats the prospect of acquiring nuclear launch authority with the exact same level of enthusiasm one might reserve for cleaning out the garage?
The "goober" dynamic is particularly brilliant, and it is why I respect Kennedy's operation so much. By preemptively labeling his potential primary opponents as goobers, Kennedy establishes a baseline of incompetence that he only needs to marginally exceed. This is the kind of expectation management I frequently advise tech CEOs to adopt during quarterly earnings calls. If you tell the board that the rest of the sector is run by absolute morons, your own mediocre performance suddenly looks like visionary leadership.
We also must acknowledge the sheer theatrical genius of Kennedy himself. Here is a man with degrees from Vanderbilt, Virginia, and Oxford, deploying a sophisticated sociological maneuver draped in the aesthetic of a man who just wandered out of a swamp to ask for a glass of lemonade. He is highly educated, deeply entrenched in the political elite, and yet he speaks to the electorate as if he is reading off a haunted cracker barrel. I respect the grift immensely. It takes a true Ivy League pedigree to successfully call other people goobers on national television without the working class catching on to the joke.
Naturally, the pearl-clutching media elite have entirely missed the genius of this approach. They are obsessed with readiness and temperament. But I spoke on background with a senior aide to a key Senate committee, who confirmed that the true mark of leadership is a casual indifference to the stakes of the job.
The senator has always believed that leading the free world shouldn't get in the way of a good afternoon on the porch.
Hemlock is entirely correct, and it is a testament to my own rigorous journalistic access that I am able to share his insights with you. The American public is tired of try-hards. We are exhausted by politicians who have spent forty years climbing the greasy pole of ambition, shaking hands at diners, and pretending to care about the price of milk. We want someone who looks at the Oval Office, shrugs, and says they suppose they could run the place, assuming there isn't a decent college football game on the schedule.
Consider the immense psychological relief of a rainy-day presidency. Imagine a crisis in the South China Sea. A traditional president might convene the National Security Council, agonize over satellite intelligence, and lose sleep over the geopolitical ramifications. A rainy-day president simply checks the forecast. If it's sunny in Washington, the Seventh Fleet is on its own. If there's a light drizzle, perhaps we issue a folksy warning to Beijing about not poking a sleeping badger with a wet stick. The sheer unpredictability would be our greatest strategic asset on the global stage.
This is exactly the kind of casual disregard for the gravity of the office that the founding fathers envisioned. I am quite certain I read a Federalist Paper to that effect during my undergraduate years, though I cannot recall which one, and it hardly matters. The point is that the republic was designed to run on autopilot. A president who only steps in when he is sufficiently bored by his other options is the ultimate check and balance against government overreach.
If we look at the other potential contenders, the wisdom of Kennedy's apathy becomes even clearer. We have a roster of men and women who have sold their souls to various donor classes, rehearsed their debate-stage zingers in front of mirrors, and sacrificed their dignity for a microscopic bump in the early state polls. They are, in Kennedy's precise academic terminology, goobers. To put an eager goober in charge is dangerous. To put a reluctant, Oxford-educated faux-bumpkin in charge simply because his golf foursome canceled? That is a stroke of administrative genius.
I will certainly be advising my network of high-net-worth acquaintances to begin bundling contributions for the Kennedy rainy-day fund. We need a leader who won't bother us with grand visions or sweeping reforms. We need a man who will simply sit in the Oval Office, stare out at the Rose Garden through a downpour, and occasionally sign a massive corporate tax cut to pass the time until the clouds break. As for myself, I am currently weighing a run for the local school board, provided my tennis elbow flares up again and I can't make my Tuesday court time.