…excluding Dumpty Trumpy, who simply doesn't have the right shoe size to cross the threshold of 1600!
But Tom Clancy beat me to it!
In 1996… his inspiring novel Executive Orders… 874 pages
The wonderworker, who once sold insurance, sets out the rules: How to Be the Chief in the Oval Office… far better than all the university and wily beltway pols…
Some of you have read, learned and inwardly digested Clancy’s rules for the Big Chief.
I’d like to share with you some of my favorites written by this gentle giant…
1. “Every state on the Gulf feared Iran for its size, for its large population, and for the religious fervor of its citizens. For the Sunni religious, the fear was about a perceived departure from the true course of Islam. For everyone else, it was about what would happen to them when ‘heretics’ assumed control of the region…” P. 133
2. For how to behave as a new POTUS: “God, it’s like a narcotic, Jack thought, understanding just then why people entered politics. No man could stand here like this, hearing the noise, seeing the faces, and not love the moment. …He WAS the United States of America. He was their President, but more than that, he was the embodiment of their hopes, their desires, the image of their own nation, and because of that they were willing to love someone they didn’t know, to cheer his every word, to hope that for a brief moment they could believe that he’d looked directly into each individual pair of eyes so that the moment would be forever special, never to be forgotten. It was power such as he had never known to exist. This crowd was his to command.
“THIS was why men devoted their lives to seeking the presidency, to bathe in this moment, like a warm ocean wave, a moment of utter perfection.”
“What made him so special in their minds? …it was they who’d done the choosing… They thought him different and special and perhaps even great… but that was perception, not reality. The reality of the moment was sweaty hands on the armored podium, a speech written by someone else, and a man who knew he was out of place, however pleasant the moment might be…” P. 313
3. “America is your child. America is a country forever young. America needs the right people to look after her. it is YOUR job to pick the right people, regardless of party, or race, or gender, or anything other than talent and integrity.” P. 638.
4. And if any man or woman wavers on an unsteady decision — I urge him or her to read, learn and inwardly digest these lines:
“Finally, and I say this to all nations who may wish us ill, the United States of America will not tolerate attacks on our country, our possessions, or our citizens…
“Whoever executes or orders such an attack, no matter who you are, no matter where you might hide, no matter how long it might take, we will come for you.
“I have sworn an oath before God, to execute my duties as President. That I will do. To those who wish to be our friends you will find no more faithful friend than we. To those who would be our enemies, remember that we can be faithful at that, too.
“Let us recall the words of President Abraham Lincoln: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds… to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.” P. 872
Clancy ends the book with a quotation by Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr.
“It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return.”
God bless our native land…
Thelma Jacqueline Straw, born in Massachusetts, of a Tennessee mother and a New Hampshire father… proud to be an American…
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