“Are you sitting comfortably?” British broadcaster Julia Long would ask her audience.  “Then I’ll begin.”  The 2008 Presidential Election has already begun.  How and with whom will its carousel of candidates end?

            At least nine Democrats pine for their nomination, including John Edwards, Barak Obama, and Hillary Clinton, “the vast right-wing conspiracy”’s bete noire.  Another nine Republicans hope to replace George Bush (a slam dunk, if you think of it): e.g. Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain, who loves W.’s escalation in Iraq.    

            A cat is said to have nine lives.  Only one survivor of  these two political nines will live to reach the White House. Do any light your fire?  Between you and me, they leave mine cold.  Paraphrasing Churchill, seldom have so many already said so much about so little.

            What to do?  First, ignore the panoply of would-be Presidents (far easier if you lack cable TV). Instead, draw a portrait of the truly ideal leader.  Comparison clarifies.  Who in today’s madding crowd most resembles your Perfect President?

            For relevance, limit our survey to radio/TV’s post-1920 age.  First, a President should bare decency.  Herbert Hoover was a pre-White House star in education, business, and government.  Later, Fortune’s Child became Depression’s Step-child.  Still Hoover’s integrity and propriety, not newly-formed, were neither bogus nor offensive.

            Next, give me authenticity.  The Presidency can change people, usually for the worst.  It didn’t with Gerald Ford, a nice man in an egomaniac’s field.  Our accidental President was open, reliable, and at ease with himself.  As his recent death showed, America remains at ease with him.

            F. Scott Fitzgerald called style “an unbroken series of perfect gestures,” defining and foretelling John F. Kennedy.  Our Perfect President would always be ready with the hospitable word or beguiling grace.  Even now, Kennedy’s evokes America’s dreamboat home, a place less of Camelot than of sheer élan and hope.

            Harry Truman was a bespectacled Machine protégé with awful sight and superb vision:  the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, the need to drop The Bomb.  Add Dwight Eisenhower’s middle-class affinity, almost becoming the U.S.1950s   Lyndon Johnson loved the raw use of power:  how to inveigle, even domineer.  We like our President to get things done.

            An ideal leader should mime Franklin Roosevelt’s self-confidence: the laugh, flung-back head, bonhomie, security.  “His idea of the President,” said historian Doris Goodwin, “was himself,” staging a cheerful conspiracy v. doubt and fear.  Exhausted and inexhaustible, FDR never let America feel puny, or afraid.  The contrast with W.’s shrunken tenure is too painful to belabor – and obvious to ignore.

            My Perfect President would share Jimmy Carter’s belief in God, spurning Babylon on the Potomac for fidelity to honor.  He/she would bare Richard Nixon’s almost demonic courage. Unhip and unboutique, Milhous grasped the Forgotten America’s nobility and injury.  He was a complex, brilliant, and fascinating man.

            “The Great Communicator” was also The Great Liberator.  Language helped Ronald Reagan, as Churchill said, use words as ammunition to light the morning star of liberty.  Bill Clinton segued between text and ad-lib rhetoric.  The Perfect President needs flexibility.  George H.W. Bush offset privilege by being a regular fellow, eclipsing Yale and Kennebunkport forming a mountain twang. 

            No past President, of course, is the total package.  None flaunts every quality desired in a leader.  Study 2008’s cacophony.  The question is less who we like than what the next President should be.  Does any light your fire?  Ask who is most likely to keep America’s embers from being doused.

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