Categories: Potter Gold

The Trouble? All Dem Lawyers

From a recent column by Victor Davis Hanson: Reagan, Cheney, Bush senior and Bush…

by Andrew Potter on Thursday, September 11, 2008 8:22am - 13 Comments

From a recent column by Victor Davis Hanson: Reagan, Cheney, Bush senior and Bush junior: Not lawyers. Meanwhile…

… every Democratic presidential nominee for president and vice president in the last seven elections — except Gore who dropped out of law school to run for Congress — has been a lawyer.

so what’s the problem?

The problem is that lawyers usually do not run companies, defend the country, lead people, build things, grow food or create capital

Tags: democrats, lawyers

More by Andrew Potter

Ed

Didn’t Bush get rejected from studying law at the University of Texas? Much better to have people running the US who aspired to be lawyers, but didn’t have the grades to get accepted…
Mike T.

Conversely, canada is having the first election in decades forever where none of the Candidates are lawyers.

Lawyers in fact do many of the activities listed in the quote. They also are really good at knowing stuff about laws, which are the things that politicians create.
Emmett

Sure Mike, the problem is, knowing about the law and making good policy are often fundamentally at odds with one another…
Emmett

(That being said, that doesn’t mean all those Republicans made anything but lousy policy…)
Scott M.

There are many smart farmers out there, but there are also many dumb ones. I don’t want to elect a person to run my country solely because they can “grow food”. I want to elect them because they’re smart, can handle making tough decisions, make the *right* decision, and have good policies.
http://economics.about.com Mike Moffatt

“The problem is that lawyers usually do not run companies, defend the country, lead people, build things, grow food or create capital…”

Who was the last business person to be President… Truman, maybe? And he was unsuccessful at it. Who was the last person to successfully “run a company” (let alone build one) that was President?
http://economics.about.com Mike Moffatt

I meant to add “self-made”.
Gideon Clarke

Having RTFL, its logic is appalling and its contribution to the analytical landscape is zero. It’s a filler column that rides tired old anti-lawyer sentiment to a predictable conclusion. Send us somewhere better next time, please.
Steve W

could be worse, the bankers might be in charge, er, just a sec…
Bill Simpson

John A Macdonald.
Abraham Lincoln.
http://www.gauntlet.ca Jason Morris

I’m pretty sure most NBA coaches can’t slam dunk to save their lives, either.
TJ Cook

Gideon Clarke: “Having RTFL, its logic is appalling and its contribution to the analytical landscape is zero. It’s a filler column that rides tired old anti-lawyer sentiment to a predictable conclusion.”

Yup. In other words, it’s a piece by Victor Davis Hanson. Having read his work from time to time over the years, I can assure that if McCain and Palin were lawyers and Obama and Biden not lawyers, Hanson would be arguing that the Dem ticket lacked the legal understanding necessary to lead the executive branch. Also we must all vote Repub for their legal experience.

Honestly Potter, you need to do better than this.
Sarah

This is that stupid anti-elitism we’re seeing more and more of noth in the US and here. God forbid someone smart and educated runs the country! They might think they’re better than the rest of us. They should like drinking domestic beer and driving the kids to hockey practice, and have no interest in understanding finance or international law. Otherwise they’re snobs.

Besides his argument makes no sense. Reagan is the only one of the listed Republicans who was a good president, and he used to be an actor.