Spots on Presidents

"A leopard can't change its spots." "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." They are total cliches and kind of offend us in that they violate the American idea that you can always change into something better or at least different. But, when you vote for President in 2008, keep them in mind.

I say this because at least our last two Presidents, probably the last three, got themselves into deep trouble doing things that were perfectly consistent with the things we found out about them during their first campaigns. Don't believe me? Look at the facts.

In 2000, we found out that George W. Bush basically had sunk at least two companies by apparently committing to the same business his dad had been in and overcommitting what was basically other people's money. When things went south, his father's friends bailed him out. Eventually, his father's friends basically put him in charge of a baseball team, whose value went way up when public money was committed for its benefit, and he sold high and got rich.

In 1992, we found out that Bill Clinton had had a lot of trouble staying away from women to which he had access as a public official. Gennifer (with a G) Flowers was the one who came out in 1992. Clinton never exactly denied that he had had something going with her.

By 1988, there was little doubt that George Bush was basically a pretty decent guy who didn't have a lot of grasp of the way that most people lived, tried more than a little too hard to make up for that and was willing to be pretty fluid in his political positions.

And each of these guys' characteristics came back and bit them badly when each of them was President. The mess in Iraq strikes me as a really, really unfortunately inflated version of W's oil business failures. Now he's asking Jim Baker, his dad's old friend, to tell him how to deal with it. You (and Hillary) can draw a straight line from Gennifer (with a G) Flowers through Paula Jones to Monica Lewinsky. Bush 41 bought it politically when he couldn't figure out what a supermarket scanner was and tried to do the right thing by agreeing to raise taxes after glibly declaring "Read my lips -- no new taxes."

Now this doesn't mean that you shouldn't vote for someone for President if somewhat disturbing things come out about them when they are running. Let's face it, there has be something a little different about you if you decide to go through what you have to go through to get elected President. Ultimately, you have to pick the best person from your party's candidates or, if you don't care about any particular party, the best of two candidates. But, as in all things, you have to listen to your little voice when considering Presidential candidates. The things you learn about them when you first meet them tell you who they will be in office.