There was a time that expectations were good. We had expectations regarding behavior of adults versus that of children. We had expectations of how our leaders should carry themselves.

I feel all the 'freedom' and individualism has demonized any 'expectation' for anyone, including leaders.

So is there no longer an expectation for how leaders should carry themself?

No POTUS comes in knowing everything about everything, because they are human. THat is why they each surround themselves with the people that do know about the things they don't. But what is the standard if a POTUS thinks they DO know everything and only works with people who will tell him he's right. What is the standards for the person's demeanor? Is it really to the point where the most juvenile wins? The one who can offer the most jabs and jokes and insults about others?


I am nervous at what I am seeing. On the one hand, there is the need to get in office before one can make changes, so it has become all about the campaign that can draw the most supporters. And in a culture that lives on drama, maybe that means the candidate who can bring the most of it wins. Maybe that means that demeanor gets thrown out the window. And if that is the only way for someone with integrity to win, someone who will and can and wants to represent all walks of American people, should standards be suspended JUST long enough to get elected, or should such a person not bother even running?

Watching from afar. I can only say there are no worthwhile candidates. American politics? The morals go down and down with each decade, except for Obama...
I am aware this is mainly an American site, but I am proud to have my Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, to govern our country in New Zealand.
She is class from head to toe....


.

I am glad you have a leader you can feel proud of. I don't know how much of our campaigns are strictly promotion or how many are for real. And I don't know if the electorate cares about dignity, respect, or class any more.

Time will tell.

That is tragic MsHarmony. (((Hugs))). I truly feel sad...edited to say, USA is a so called SuperPower. That scares me, when morals are dubious.
What are you unleashing to the world?

Morals do and should matter. Keeping our promises so other nations trust us matters.
With all the disinformation out there and doctored videos, people believe anything.
Some actually believe Nancy is a drunk.
Give me as break.
You should be nervous, I am, we all should be.
The current administration is normalizing disfunction and chaos. A bully that doesn't try to even hide it, he's proud.
A leader should be someone we are proud of. I am ashamed.

I doubt most people will find the ability to read and understand what I'm writing. These opinions have come from many years of following the news and politics of our country; most younger people have not lived long enough to even grasp part of my message.

There have been many changes over the years that have gotten us to where we are now. There was a time when the news was reported by a few news services or TV news organizations. Basically everyone got the same news and it was reported without the interjection of opinion. Now it is very difficult to even find the news without opinion. It is a race for ratings and marketed to a particular demographic group through newspapers, cable news networks, or internet websites and all targeted toward a particular audience.

There was a time when political ads were aimed at showing what a political party and candidate believed in. There were no ads about how bad the opposing candidate was only contrasting what the opponent or his/her party believed in that was different. Now how often do you see a political ad that is based on the qualities of the candidate paying for the ad? We have seen more and more distortion of the facts both by the candidates and the news organizations backing those particular candidates.

We have also seen the changes in our electorate. People have developed shorter attention spans so anything you want to tell them must be boiled down to a few words in a sound byte. Add in the smart phones that many people use for their news and political content and everything must be in a few words or a short video clip; the 15 second ad. Often times it seems like people only get the headline and not the substance or nuance of what is presented. We can thank ourselves and our failing education system for this!

Enter in someone running for political office! That person now has to overcome the impediments to getting out their message. They have to do or say something that attracts the news cycle and that the electorate will remember. We can see this well with Trump being the very brash, condescending person and controlling the news cycle. We see just the opposite with Biden where very little of what he says ever makes the news cycle. The media is part of the key to the whole to the whole mess with their lousy, opinionated news cycle. It is all about the "spin" put on a comment by a politician. For example, Trump made a comment about looking at entitlements during has 2nd term when he was at the Davos forum. Some news organizations reported this with some information on possible ways to deal with the entitlement problem while others reported Trump wants to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Many people don't even seem to know what the term "entitlements" means in government jargon!!!

We, the people have brought on this whole sordid mess and political polarization with the help of the media and only we can fix it. I doubt if it will get better only worse until it effectively destroys our nation. Maybe when it is just about to explode, enough people will recognize the risks and demand change. I'm sorry but most great societies in history have been destroyed from within and we are on our way there today!!

Well put.

oldkid46:

I watched as what you describe occurred. I saw much of it directly, even though I was too young to immediately recognize what was happening. I only later pieced together what I now am convinced is the accurate sequence of events. My view is tricky to follow as well.

First, a good thing happened. We won World War 2. The reason why I think all modern history dates from that point, is that before that time, there was no worldwide sensibility for most people, and no worldwide instant communications to keep them sensing it all.

Element one: the Atomic Bombs. More than anything else, the bombs captured the imagination of the world, and of Americans, and somewhat inadvertently convinced everyone that the way to victory in all things, was through being SCIENTIFIC about it.

Element two: that unfortunately contributed heavily to the conviction that science should be blindly applied to industry and business as well. America rapidly moved from idealizing people with good ideas, to idealizing the ones who managed to profit the most from how the ideas were MARKETED. It took about a decade or so for the leaders of American business to be replaced by Business Science leaders, but once they were in control, maximum profit alone, became the judge of whether a product was good or not.

It took a little while longer for those who owned the major news services, to decide that those should cease to be purely service to their communities, and instead should become profit centers as well. Out went effort to get stories right, and in proper proportion, and in came an emphasis on excitement and viewership, at the expense of literally everything else.

It took almost another decade for the political party leaderships to decide that the same idea would work for them: by approaching elections from a pure business-science standpoint, many reasoned that they could only support their goals, if they were voted into power.

It should have been no surprise that main party which was both convinced that it's most cherished ideas were unpopular, AND wanted to style themselves as the Party of Business, would be the one that decided that truth in advertising should take second place behind winning elections.

Mind you, that doesn't mean they were the only ones who decided to be less than honest, it just meant that they were the ones who most rapidly moved from putting personal and party honor in second position of importance, to finally discarding it altogether, as we see they have done now.

This last step happened through predictable and natural evolution: if your leadership sets a standard of win only, and otherwise do as you wish, with the assumption that the wiser top leaders could then run the country wisely once in power...and it takes more than a single generation for the plan to succeed... the leadership itself will cease to be the wise string-pullers who knew they were lying to get there, and would have become the people who actually believed the lies used to win, were true.

Thus the party of Lincoln didn't SET OUT to become racist; but by catering carefully to racists in order to win elections for several decades, a lot of actual racists climbed the steps of power within the party, until racism now actually infests the upper reaches of it.

And willingness to look the other way, if needed to win elections, evolved to eagerly looking directly at despicable activities and praising them.

"Element two: that unfortunately contributed heavily to the conviction that science should be blindly applied to industry and business as well. America rapidly moved from idealizing people with good ideas, to idealizing the ones who managed to profit the most from how the ideas were MARKETED. It took about a decade or so for the leaders of American business to be replaced by Business Science leaders, but once they were in control, maximum profit alone, became the judge of whether a product was good or not. "

Along this line, I found a very good, in depth article on this: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/opinion-how-mckinsey-destroyed-the-middle-class/ar-BBZBcE2?li=BBnbfcN

This kind of politics ... seems here to stay ... they have to degrade one another ...so they can stay away from the real issues ... I have never in my life have been so embarrassed by our country's President ... just to start he is the hypocrite... and bully's everyone he does not like or fires them ... while his wife is in the back ground trying to stop the bullying ... he makes her look bad by what he does himself ... he really discounts her reputation ... but guess he does not care ... and one example he is in it for himself ... but in the backround trying to get the policys past ...while along puts on a smile to win others votes ... they say where looking at a depression in the nxt few mnths ... still in ?