Can a Boring Person be President?

I wonder sometimes with the way politics is covered if one day the election of a US President will be done through an American Idol type reality show. While “exploring” a run as a Republican, free-trade opponent and publicity addict Donald Trump was leading in a poll of possible Republican voters. Trump even received qualified support from Rush Limbaugh because Rush was in favor of the Trump’s methods of “taking it to President Obama”. One lesson that should be learned from Trump’s “exploration” is that we, as a country and as members of the GOP, deserve better. And what I wonder is, can a boring person be elected President and I wish the answer to be yes.

The current boring candidate is Tim Pawlenty with Mitch Daniels a potential boring candidate. Plausible candidate Sarah Palin would be considered a boring candidate if she wasn’t a she, who has been turned into an unfortunate caricature by bad actors. There are arguments for other candidates being boring, but to me the frontrunners are Pawlenty and Daniels. Neither is completely ideal but that’s because no one knows how they would actually perform as President, and that experience is the only way to truly judge a President, by their actions in that office. Both have extensive gubernatorial experience with good conservative records and are impressive in their respective abilities to complete sentences without being sensational.

But, can a President be boring? I blame Bill Clinton for conditioning the conventional wisdom that the President must have some interesting “storyline” in order to be elected. The man from Hope, whatever that meant. Obama continued with dreams from his father, whatever those were. George W. Bush was able to use his victory over drinking and Christian conversion as interesting themes. American Idol can be entertaining but a Presidential election shouldn’t devolve into something akin to a High School class election. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s about who has the best ideas and the demeanor best suited for representing the United States of America. We don’t have that right now and I think the best path is boring.