Finally, an independent candidate for president has emerged, an alternative to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: Evan McMullin.
Who? He has been a top staffer for the House Republican Conference and was a former CIA officer and Goldman Sachs businessman. The 40-year-old Mormon is conservative, pro-life, and apparently has the support of at least some NeverTrump conservatives. He has raised some money and has PAC support, even though the deadline for an independent getting on the ballot has already passed in 26 states. This would be his first elective office.
In other words, it sounds like to me, he isn’t qualified either. I rant about this, as well as giving more information about him, after the jump.
Unlike most Americans of all parties today, I don’t go by just scrutinizing what a candidate believes. I know lots of people whose ideas I agree with, but that doesn’t mean they would be good presidents. Nor do I expect a candidate to come up with creative new ideas to solve our nation’s problems. I would welcome creative new ideas from any source and encourage those who can do so to act on them, but coming up with them is not a president’s job.
The president is someone who has to administer the Executive Branch, serve as the Commander in Chief, deal with crises, and perform the other duties listed in the Constitution. This job description gives the president plenty to do. It takes wisdom and strong character, including sound beliefs, but it also takes administrative ability and experience in government.
Donald Trump was hiring apprentices, but would he hire someone completely inexperienced to be CEO of his company? And yet Trump wants voters to make him the CEO of America, though he is completely inexperienced in governing. I don’t think Hillary Clinton’s experience, though in government, relates all that well to what the president has to do. Barack Obama was elected as a junior senator, and his inexperience clearly showed.
While it is true that nothing adequately prepares one for the presidency, being a state governor probably come closest. I prefer candidates who are old, not young. Seasoned, not energetic. Careful, not self-confident. Which probably means I will always be in the dilemma I am now of not having a candidate I can whole-heartedly support.
But I realize that McMullin is just offering himself as a protest vote. So here is the website of his campaign. Here is an interview with National Review.
From Meet Evan McMullin, The #NeverTrump Movement’s Last Hope : NPR:
Republicans opposed to Donald Trump are making a last-ditch effort to put forth an alternative to the GOP presidential nominee.
Evan McMullin, a onetime chief policy director for House Republicans and a former CIA officer, is launching an independent presidential campaign with the help of political group Better for America.
Blasting Trump as personally unstable and “a real threat to our Republic,” McMullin said on his website that he felt compelled to run as an independent.
“With the stakes so high for our nation and at this late stage in the process, I can no longer stand on the sidelines,” McMullin wrote. “Our country needs leaders who are in it for the right reasons and who actually understand what makes this country the greatest on earth. Leaders who will unite us and guide us to a prosperous, secure future, beyond the dysfunction of a broken political system.”
In an interview with ABC News shortly after announcing, McMullin said that both Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton were unacceptable. . . .
[Keep reading. . .]
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