The Origin Of The Presidential Species

Why do we not stop and consider the whole process of electing a President from the vantage point of a Darwinian process? Is it not, in our minds if not in reality, a bit of the old survival of the fittest? What are the characteristics of those running for President? What are the characteristics of those who lead in the beginnings? In the mid term of the race? What are those characteristics of the eventual winners? Consider this: WE have created a Darwinian process for electing officials. Let us describe this process. Money seems to be a natural to be in any list. The individual running for President must have ready access to money, and lots of it. Thus, we have a wealthy family, or wealthy friends, or wealthy corporations, or wealthy unions as supporters, plus a knack for the grubbing of the green. Since this same characteristic extends to Senators and Represenatatives, it is doubtful that they should ever enact meaningful campaign reform, thereby negating the traits they possess. Beyond the obvious, is there more in the influence of money? For example, in David Geffen's remark about the Bush and Clinton royal families, is there something else going on? Might we say that the monied interests are finding that it is better to have a limited range of potential candidates, thereby keeping a handle on the situation? (It did not work with Bush Jr., but the elite is not actually dieing in Iraq now, is it?) How else may we describe this eco-system? Information Processing is another facet. There appears to be a great need for feed-back loops. Most political opinion bloggers seem to be self-reinforcing feedback loops. There is a mighty feedback, but little or no input. The candidates have to be masters of this: no input, appeal to the squeaky loopsters. There has to be a constant repetition and a constant posturing. There are appeals to reason, but no actual reason. There are appeals to comity, but little or no friendliness. In short, all words need to be as empty of meaning as possible. The more empty the words become, the more self-reinforcing feed back is necessary to create the illusion of meaning, just as if a microphone placed too near a speaker will create a cacophony of noise...and we may pretend it is a concert of music. Race is important, as well as Gender. There have been observed certain individuals in the eco-system who appear to have mutated. The racial barrier seems to have been bridged by individuals with a multi-racial heritage. The Gender barrier still remains. Hmmm. I thought this would have been a great deal more interesting than it turned out.