A question of leadership

[unixronin]

Let us skip, for the moment, long arguments about what form of government is best, and consider Robert Anson Heinlein's assertion (via Lazarus Long) that democracy is doomed to fail once its citizens realize they have the power to vote themselves bread and circuses, and that possibly the best and most stable form of government is a benevolent dictatorship.

I will emphasize at this point that this is not a debate on whether he was right.  If you disagree with the assertion, feel free to skip the discussion entirely if you wish, but please don't diverge into arguments about why it's wrong.

The point here is quite simple:  Assume for the moment that Heinlein's, or Long's, assertion is correct.  That stipulated, and under that condition, what I solicit is your opinion as to who might make a good Supreme Leader, and more importantly, why.

Conditions:

• Your candidate may not be fictional.
• Your candidate must be currently alive.
• Your candidate need not be a current public figure.

Beyond those ground rules, it's wide open.  Go for it.

Comments

[pernishus.livejournal.com]

How about Colin Powell?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I think the idea has merit, assuming he'd take the job. Why in particular did you nominate him, though?

[pernishus.livejournal.com]

I think he is perhaps the single black candidate who could realistically handle the job, and I think it would do the US a great deal of good, both internally and externally, to have a black president.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I agree with those points. I'm also impressed with his integrity, and think BushCo used him very shabbily to take advantage of it.

[motomuffin.livejournal.com]

Jean-Luc Picard!

Shut up! He is too, real! And *straight*!! *LALALA NOT LISTENING LA LA*

[jenkitty.livejournal.com]

Hey, he may be real, but he won't be *alive* until the 24th century.

[jenkitty.livejournal.com]

We keep trying to nominate tabbifli for Supreme Dictator. She won't let supreme power go to her head... she already has it.

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

Colin Powell has the integrity we'd want for a truly benevolent dictator, but I don't think he has the political savvy. See, if the dictator is to be truly benevolent, then s/he has to garner cooperation and respond to the will of the people.

Anyone truly morally good will not be able to play the political game. (See Jimmy Carter.)

So my choice would be Bill Clinton. He's intelligent, he's savvy, he's pretty middle-of-the-road, he truly does seem to have the best interests of the country in mind, and he's proven that he does an excellent job as an administrator.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

He also sold the influence of his office to Communist China, illegally accepted campaign funding from foreign powers, perjured himself before Congress, and tried to disarm the American people. You were kidding, right......?

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

He also sold the influence of his office to Communist China,

Every single president we've ever had since Nixon has sold the influence of his office to Communist China. I'm starting to think there's something about China that we don't know.

illegally accepted campaign funding from foreign powers,

That's the first I've heard of that allegation. What are you referring to? At any rate, a dictator doesn't need to campaign, so that's irrelevant.

perjured himself before Congress,

Yes, he denied cheating on his wife when he really had. Unlike the current president's lies, Clinton's lies didn't lead to the deaths of over 2000 American servicemen. Seriously, I'd rather have a leader who tries to protect his wife's feelings when he screws up, than one who brags about it openly.

and tried to disarm the American people.

There have been too many shootings in my neighborhood by drunks, crazies and drug dealers for me to be sympathetic to arming the American people. Let's have a well-regulated militia and licensed hunters, and get handguns off the street.

You were kidding, right......?

Like I said, highly moral people do not make good politicians. You've got to find the right balance between integrity and sleaze, and I think Clinton's got it.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that one. I'm not interested in a good politician; I'm interested in a good benevolent dictator, and in order to be anything but a corrput tyrant, his integrity must be unquestionable. John Sheridan had something to say about little lies, and how if you can't be honest about the small stuff, you can't be expected to be honest about the big stuff. That path leads to star chambers, codes of silence, and black budgets.

Bush, meanwhile, started out on the big lies and just kept going ........

I'm sorry your neighborhood is bad. I've lived in bad neighborhoods too. They tended to be the ones where only the bad actors were armed, because the good citizens weren't allowed to and weren't willing to break the law.

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

About arming good citizens... bbwoof has a handgun, kept unloaded in a box in the closet.

That didn't prohibit a nutcase from committing suicide-by-cop last spring, in the street a hundred yards from our rear window. Even if the fellow had run from the police officer into our back yard, instead of brandishing his BB gun and threatening him, it would not have made sense for bbwoof to dig out his handgun and go outside looking for him. He would have just got in the police officer's way, and could have been shot by the police himself. ("He was a wild-haired almost-naked 300-lb man waving a pistol, of course I shot first and asked questions later!")

bbwoof's handgun didn't help when an argument between the brother and boyfriend of a neighbor's teenage daughter turned ugly a few weeks ago. It's unclear about whether they were arguing over the girl or over drugs. Boyfriend was standing in their front yard, brother was up on the front porch. When boyfriend took out a gun, brother turned to flee inside and got shot in the butt. Boyfriend was caught hiding in the alley by the cops.

bbwoof could have gone out onto our front porch while the teens were arguing and told them to shut up. He's done similar things before. But he would not have done so while flourishing his handgun. That would have simply escalated the situation, and resulted in either the kid in the dark street taking a shot at bbwoof as he stood well-illuminated under the front porch light, or in the neighbor's son calling the cops on bbwoof.

Heck, even if someone were to break into our home at night, would bbwoof's handgun be of any use to us? By the time we heard any noise over our snores, and realized that the creaky floorboard was not the cat, would he have enough time to get the box down from the top shelf of the closet, locate the weapon and ammunition, and load it -- stealthily, in the dark? We'd be better protected by first quickly locking the bedroom door, calling 911 on our cell phones, and getting the hell out of there through the bedroom window.

The problem is that good citizens don't start trouble, they don't shoot first, and they don't act crazy. Therefore they will always be at a disadvantage, armed or not, when confronting bad citizens.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

About arming good citizens... [info]bbwoof has a handgun, kept unloaded in a box in the closet.

That didn't prohibit a nutcase from committing suicide-by-cop last spring, in the street a hundred yards from our rear window.

Nor would I expect it to. Ultimately, you cannot prevent suicide. Someone who really wants to die can ALWAYS find a way. I submit that the best way to handle the problem is to not try so hard to prevent it that would-be suicides resort to means that take five or ten or fifty people with them. But then, I have a personal conviction that any right to life is hollow without a right to terminate that life when you see fit.

bbwoof's handgun didn't help when an argument between the brother and boyfriend of a neighbor's teenage daughter turned ugly a few weeks ago. It's unclear about whether they were arguing over the girl or over drugs. Boyfriend was standing in their front yard, brother was up on the front porch. When boyfriend took out a gun, brother turned to flee inside and got shot in the butt. Boyfriend was caught hiding in the alley by the cops.

As a counter-example, I submit the occasion when jilara heard a fracas outside, went to the window, and saw the ne'er-do-well abusive boyfriend of the downstairs-and-over tenant dragging her screaming toward the alley by her hair. She stepped out on her deck with her pump shotgun, racked the slide, and demanded, "Is there some PROBLEM here?" Boyfriend dropped the neighbor and fled. My recollection is neighbor subsequently obtained a restraining order; it may have been because of jilara's intervention that she was alive to do so.

Heck, even if someone were to break into our home at night, would bbwoof's handgun be of any use to us? By the time we heard any noise over our snores, and realized that the creaky floorboard was not the cat, would he have enough time to get the box down from the top shelf of the closet, locate the weapon and ammunition, and load it -- stealthily, in the dark? We'd be better protected by first quickly locking the bedroom door, calling 911 on our cell phones, and getting the hell out of there through the bedroom window.

I venture to suggest that this illustrates the folly of keeping a weapon in the house stored in such a way that you can't get to it in time if you need it. In your scenario, I can have the .45 in the lockbox bolted into my headboard in my hand and ready to fire in three seconds.

If you keep a firearm stored unloaded and so inaccessible you can't get to it in time to use it, and yet store it unlocked, all you're doing is providing a free weapon to the first burglar who breaks in when you're out and tosses the place.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

i need one of those lock boxes, a .45 under the pillow is slightly uncomfy.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

a neighbor of mine had a burglar arrested after she had held him at gun point. beteween the time he got locked up and the time he got released, she had sold her revolver. i noticed that this clown was showin up at her gate everynight in a different vehicle. after the 3rd time, i got the story from her, because the arrest had happeed when i was living out of state. that night, i sat on my front porch cleaning my Mossburg 500A. when said clown arrived on a bicycle, i had just screwed down the pistol grip. i slipped a few rounds of #4 buck into the mag, followed by a snap cap. when i saw the clown, i racked the shotgun. he looked over at me and i grinned at him. he never came back after that.

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

A lockbox bolted to the headboard is a good idea.

Where do you get such a thing?

(take 2, corrected)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, mine came from an outfit called GunVault. They were apparently out of business for a while, but they're back. Check them out at their web site. (http://www.gunvault.com) There are others, including one outfit that makes safe specifically intended to be installed in vehicles.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I should also mention that not only is the box bolted into the headboard, but the headboard is bolted to the bed frame, which is a queensize waterbed frame and weighs probably 200 pounds all told. No-one's gonna just grab it and walk off with it, and no-one's prying it open without serious tools. I don't know if the backup cylinder lock is vulnerable to the Kryptonite Bic exploit, but even if it is, where it's mounted I doubt you could get enough access to try it -- there's only a couple of inches of headroom over the lock.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

there are more cases of peopele using firearms to protect themselves or others then there are cases of criminals using them in crimes, as someone who falls into the first category, i believe everyone should have a gun and know how to use it.

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

ME! Me!!! hahahahahahaha!

<Zim>OBEY THE FIST!</Zim>

*ahem* Yes, I would be the ideal benevolent dictator.

Right?

[shadowcat48li.livejournal.com]

I dont remember the guys name, but how about the army general that was in command on the ground in New Orleans, the guy had presence, style, and a no BS atttitude, and didnt have a problem with telling the media when they were being idiots, we really need more people like him that dont play CYA and get the job done

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

I believe that was General Honore.

[dafydd.livejournal.com]

The closest I could think of, right now, is John McCain. And, he's not that close.

More generally, iron integrity is critical. Also, a "smaller government is better" attitude. I'm mixed on how isolationist s/he should be, given how intertwined the world economy is.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I agree with those points. I don't think isolationism is necessary, so long as gratuitous military adventurism isn't on the table.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I would argue that it doesn't make a rat's ass *what* kind of government you've got, it's the quality of the people you have that makes it. But I won't do it here. :)

So.

Not fictional. Damn. That leaves out Mackenzie Allen, Jack Ryan, Benjamin Mayhew (!), Eloise Prichard, Delenn... all the really GOOD ones.

Lessee. Who have we got left. And they have to be good as a dictator, not simply as a politician (which leaves out Jimmy Carter *and* Fred Thompson). OK, I've got two: Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, and Rudolph Giuliani. Governor Phil led Tennessee to a balanced budget, cutting TennCare (the attempt at semi-socialist medicine) more or less by fiat and making it stick. He's one of those old-school Tennessee hillbilly politicians who actually believes in being HONEST... what a concept. I think he might make a good BDFL. The other is Rudy. When the one group of asshats turned a pair of Boeings into ICBM's and the other group started stealing freedom right and left, Rudy didn't panic; he brought New York together and got it well on its way to rebuilding. The charisma it takes to rally eight milion people around you makes for an excellent BDFL.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Wow, an honest politician? Hell HAS frozen over....

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Hell freezes over every winter. Just ask the nice folks from Michigan.

No, there is a very special place in the world where honest politicians are born and bred, roughly within 100 miles of Knoxville, TN. Howard Baker (Oneida). Fred Thompson (Lawrenceburg). Lamar Alexander (Maryville). Phil Bredesen is from a bit further West (Nashville), and a Democrat, but he's one of those very weird animals, a fiscally conservative Democrat, which is almost as unique as the East Tennessee Honest Politician and almost as suitable a candidate for BDFL.

Yes, they're rare as hen's teeth... but they do exist.

[skellington.livejournal.com]

He's a bit older than I'd prefer, and he probably wouldn't take the job, but how about Warren Buffet?

He's one of the richest men in America, but lives relatively simply. He made his own wealth. He has done most of it by buying up small to mid-sized companies with good management, and letting them continue to manage. He then rakes in the profits.

So he has clue about money, he's brilliant, he's relatively pragmatic, he delegates well, and he has clue about how the world works.

Basically, if I were picking someone as a dictator, I'd want a CEO, manager, general, or someone else who ISN'T a politician and has never run for office. I'd want someone who had done things in the real world and have proven management and leadership experience (unlike our current president.) I'd want someone smart but not an academic.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

A very interesting suggestion with a lot of merit. He's also demonstrated fairly well that he isn't power-mad.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

If you want to go that route, you might try Jim Kramer. He's the hedge fund manager turned financial-advisor-to-the-masses; he capers about CNBC quite a bit most days.... he's loud, he's brash, he takes no bullshit from anybody.... but he *thinks*, and he *knows people*. And he also knows how people are, and can tell if your bs'ing them or not. He's one of that class of people known as "loveable asshole"... he's somewhat arrogant, but that's because he knows he's right... and when he's wrong, he comes clean about it, willingly.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

He wouldn't take it, from what I've seen of the man, but Packard ("Packy") Offield of the Wrigley family. He's been essentially the benevolent dictator of Santa Catalina for decades, and has implemented an amazingly responsible environmental and civic-oriented philosophy for the Island. (And anyone who would rather run a small island fiefdom than be a bigwig in an extremely wealthy corporate family has something, right there. Which brings us to another of those connundrums. Most of the people who are best qualified for such positions wouldn't want them to begin with.)

[bbullock.livejournal.com]

"I wouldn't want to be president of any club that would have me for a member."
Or something like that. Groucho Marx, if I recall correctly.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

P.J. O'Rourke attributed that "assertion" about democracy to Alexander Tytler (http://www.am1500.com/garagelogic/tytler.htm), a scot.

Random would be better than the current system

[attutle.livejournal.com]

We could randomly select our leaders from the entire pool of willing citizens, and we'd have a substantially better system than the current one.

Related questions:
- Does random selection solve enough of the current problems, or do we need to do even better than that?
- Can we do better than random selection?

Re: Random would be better than the current system

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Perhaps a random initial selection, with successive choices progressively weighted by a genetic algorithm?

[claire.livejournal.com]

Neil Gaiman.

Or anyone who's reasonably smart and has some common sense. And has worked hard to make a success of themselves.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That could be said of Bill Gates. I don't think I'd want him as Supreme Leader. Every detail of our lives would be pwn3d.

The attributes you cite are, I think, necessary, but not sufficient by themselves.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

attutle

Because he's smart, and I'd trust him to have the job.

-Ogre

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Interesting choice. You're only the second person to suggest someone they know personally, and I suspect the first to do so seriously.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Very serious. I've said it before, without even being asked the question.

-Ogre

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I didn't doubt you were serious. I simply suspect jenkitty was less so.

Benny "Dick" Tater

[zeekar.livejournal.com]

Hm. This is a tough call. Definitely not Clinton, though. That sort of wrongheadedness is why we need a dictator in the first place! :)

In all seriousness, I think Jon Stewart would do a good job. Yeah, he's a professional funnyman. And he's got professional writers helping him at it. But from what I've read about him, and assuming things like the 'Tucker Carlson is a dick' appearance aren't totally bogus setups, he's much more reasonable about most issues than just about anyone you see on TV (who tend to be extremists one way or the other). In fact, one of the funniest moments on his show was when he suggested taking to the streets and shouting "Just Be Reasonable!!"

Well, that won't work, so let's just put him in charge and let him make us be reasoanble. :)

I'd take McCain as a fallback, though.

Re: Benny "Dick" Tater

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I must admit I've never considered a professional comedian for the post. I suppose it would bring some levity to government. :)

I'm minded of Wavy Gravy's campaign in Berserkeley: "Why not vote for a REAL clown for a change?"

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

Michael Badnarik!!!!

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Ron Paul.

-Ogre

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Ron Paul's name crossed my mind too. "The only 100% reliable pro-freedom vote in Congress." The man has integrity AND sense, and understands his responsibilities.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

he's a decent choice, but i don't like his stance on a few issues.