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They do.I am going to be profoundly contrarian here. It is very, very easy to say “aww, hell, all politicians are crooks!” or “damnit, I hate this candidate, but I hate their opponent more!” or “politics is dirty!” or “the system is rigged!” or whatever else. Cynicism is cheap. We spend much of our time focused, laser-like, on the flaws and controversies of everyone who enters the public sphere. It’s natural, and it’s even constructive.So allow me a counterpoint.You can say what you want about any one of these men — notice I will not say a word on the politics of any of them nor will I even discuss their time as president -- but let me at least lay it out for you. Again, I make no comment about the value of their respective presidencies - just their resumes as candidates.Our current president is one of the most gifted orators of the last half century, with a profoundly inspiring background whose very existence as a public figure gives hope to millions. He is an extremely intelligent and profoundly decent man, who rocketed to political success after a background in community organizing, law, and academia and on the basis of an expressed vision that what unites us is stronger than what divides us.This man was the extremely popular two-term governor of one of the nation’s most populous states — when he was reelected in 1998, it was with the highest vote total of any governor in Texas history. He had a knack for connecting with people in a way that many politicians didn’t — he never, in the Southern way of speaking, “put on airs.” Being the son of a President and the brother of a very popular governor of another populous state, he came from a pedigree few could match. When he won in 2000, it was against a primary field that was one of the most impressive ever. And he won in large measure because he espoused a vision of the GOP that was compassionate and big tent.This man could make a reasonable claim to being among the most intelligent individuals of the late 20th century. A Rhodes Scholar, Oxford educated, and tremendously bright lawyer, he chose to enter public service, beginning as Attorney General and then as Governor of Arkansas — he was 32 when he was first elected Governor, the youngest in the country by far and among the youngest to ever hold the office of Governor of any state. When elected again in 1982, he then served in the office for ten years straight before bursting onto the national scene.Arguably one of the most accomplished Americans of his generation — and it was a doozy — this man joined the Navy on his 18th birthday, following Pearl Harbor, became an aviator (quite literally the youngest aviator in the entire United States Navy at the time), left the service at the end of the war, breezed through Yale in two and a half years, founded an oil company, and was a millionaire by the age of 40. Then, he chose to become a public servant, was elected to the United States House of Representatives, became the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, was a special envoy to China at a critical time, and then became the director of the CIA. Following that, he became a two-term Vice President before being elected President himself.Raised poor, this man started out as a radio announcer, then an actor. While his acting career was not that noteworthy, he was held in such high esteem by his peers that he was chosen to lead the Screen Actors Guild as president, twice elected during the 1950s when it was arguably one of the most important unions in America. Like Obama, his “coming out” was as a convention speaker, where he showed an uncanny vision for an optimistic Republicanism. He was then elected Governor of the most populous state in the union and easily won reelection. He ran unsuccessfully for president twice, gaining tremendous respect and national exposure in the process, before finally winning the nomination and then the office. He was subsequently reelected by the largest electoral college margin in American history.Just for the sake of comprehensiveness, let’s blow through the rest of the latter half of the twentieth century in a lightning round!A distinguished naval officer on nuclear submarines, then peanut farmer who was elected to the Georgia state senate twice, then was elected Governor and subsequently defeated the incumbent President of the United States -- one of only a handful of times that had happened.A former standout college athlete (not “I played some ball in college” but rather “one of the greatest college football players ever”) who had offers from the NFL he turned down for law school, this dude became a lawyer then a congressman for 25 years, a minority leader, then Vice President.Brilliant lawyer, then Representative, then Senator, then Vice President for eight years, and all along he was one of the most significant “party boss” types in the modern era who led the GOP back to post-FDR relevance.For my money, perhaps the most effective legislator of the 20th century, he started as a teacher, became a congressional aide, then a congressman himself, then Senator, then Majority Leader, then Vice President, before taking over the Presidency himself.…I could really go on. Before that, you’re talking five star generals, hot shot Senators, industrialists, and on and on and on.Heck, let’s not even look at the winners. Just the losers!This year, the primaries included:The longest serving independent in the history of the United State Congress who began his career as a civil rights activist.A former federal prosecutor who became a popular two-term Governor.Two term Governor of one of America’s largest states.A former big city mayor who was then a two-term Governor.A two-term Governor of one of America’s largest states that is also the critical swing state.A bonafide genius who was the first Hispanic, then the longest-serving Solicitor General in state history, then a Senator.An attorney, then speaker for his state’s house of representatives, then a very popular young Senator.And the winners included a successful businessman who became one of America’s enduring symbols of wealth acquisition alongside an extremely bright attorney who became a senator and Secretary of State. Trump is admittedly a bit of an outlier, but if you are looking for people with top-level civil executive experience and long records of public service, well, you got ‘em.You have to go a long way back before you find a dud.So I guess my first answer to people wondering why we don’t get better people running for president is…Well hell, what did you do today?Beyond that, I think there is something we don’t often realize.Public service is a very crappy way to become rich or famous.It’s true! If you are an extremely smart individual and your goal is fortune, you do not give up your career on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley to run for the open seat in AZ-2. Typically, the people who get elected to state office are people who have been paying their dues for years, organizing voters, signing people up with clipboards, schmoozing donors, and on and on. You wind up spending all of your 20s and most of your 30s doing mundane work for no pay. Your peers, typically, are busy making partner or obtaining VC funding while you’re worrying about yard signs. It is a lousy way to get rich.If you are an extremely vain individual and your goal is popularity or power, public service is likewise an awful avenue. You spend most of your life in public service eating shit. You have to sit and listen to constituents tell you every crazy reason in the book why you’re a Jew Illuminati as you just smile and nod. Before you even sniff ballot access as a major party candidate, you have to pay your dues shadowing small-ball idiots whom you, nevertheless, have to treat as the next JFK. And most people who run for office….well, they lose. But, they don’t tell you that part. Hell, even in my little exercise above, nearly all those guys got stomped at one point or another. And most people don’t even get that far -- they die on the vine trying to build name ID for a local congressional race in New Hampshire. It is a lousy way to get famous.And all this is way before talk of a presidential run.The truth is: people who have dedicated their lives to public service have typically done so because they believe in something.More to the point, the very fact that they are running for office usually means they are sacrificing something in an effort to make a difference. That they have paid dues, come through the ranks, and offered something of themselves.It’s not for everyone! There are smarter people around — Elon Musk, I’m sure, has better ideas — but would any of them make a better public servant? I don’t know. I actually doubt it.But, to answer your question:Why don’t better people run for U.S. President?The answer is because there simply is not a huge incentive — if you want to be the smartest or richest or most popular person — to run for U.S. president.So, what you are left with, instead, are the people who do it in spite of the fact that it’s a bad way to be the smartest or richest or most popular person.What you are left with are people who run for U.S. President because they believe in something.That might not be your definition of “better people,” but maybe that has less to do with them and more to do with us.

It manifestly does not result in fairer elections.People who like the system as it is because it benefits their side have a tendency to read their own ideology into the wishes of the founders.But the idea that the electoral college exists because the founders wanted to prevent large states from overwhelming small ones is rooted more in modern partisanship than in the debates of the 1780s.Americans tend to be fed a steady diet of founding father worship from the time they are children. The result is a sort of indoctrination from which it is almost impossible to escape. Every action taken by these men tends to be treated with undue reverence and assumed to have resulted from a concentration of wisdom never before and never since observed in human history.This is a story fit to be told to children, who often lack a capacity for nuance; but it is not how adults seeking to understand history should approach matters. The first thing to understand is that as men raised in the 18th century, the drafters of the American constitution did not believe in universal suffrage.They were, in fact, exceedingly skeptical of democracy. This was especially true of the federalists, but it was shared by the majority of the political leadership in all colonies. Voting was seen not as a right, but as a privilege of those deemed to have a stake in society, that is, property owners.The popular will was deemed to be too easily manipulated by demagogues. As such, it was deemed to be best to filter it through less and less democratic institutions, in order to insulate it from mob rule.The House was seen as the equivalent of the British House of Commons. This was going to be the most democratic institution in the nation. But even then, not everyone could vote in most states. The Senate was seen as the upper House. Most founders did not want it to be directly elected. This wasn’t because they wanted to preserve the powers of the states, as modern conservatives think but because they wanted it to be a body that would protect the interests of the landed, wealthy classes.The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge of the wants or feelings of the day laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. The landed interest, at present, is prevalent; but in process of time, when we approximate to the states and kingdoms of Europe; when the number of landholders shall be comparatively small, through the various means of trade and manufactures, will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability. Various have been the propositions; but my opinion is, the longer they continue in office, the better will these views be answered.That is the whole point of the Senate, from James Madison, at the Constitutional Convention. In fact, some of the delegates wanted the Senate to be a permanent body, not subject to reelection.There were similar processes at play for a variety of other question, notably, the question on how the Senate should be elected. Some wanted it to be done in such a way as to make it independent of the states. Others wanted the states to retain as much power as possible, deeming that the state legislatures were likely to make wiser choices than the general electorate. Others felt equally strongly that to allow the state legislature to elect members of Congress would open the door for corruption. Every step of the way, there were compromises, so that the final document that emerged was not what anyone really wanted. It was just the most reasonable document that could pass the convention. That was all. Some great ideas were discarded. And some not so great ideas had to be adopted in order to make the final document palatable to the greatest number of delegates.What is evident if you bother to actually read the various deliberations that occurred during the convention, as opposed to reading your current ideology into the wishes of a majority of the framers, is just how all over the place their proposals were in all manner of things:Executive power to be vested in one person.Executive power to be vested in three persons.The executive to have a veto.The executive to have no veto.The executive to have a right of revision of legislation.The executive to make judicial appointments.The Senate to make judicial appointments.The executive to be elected for life.The executive to be elected for 4 years.The executive to be elected for 6 years.The executive to be elected for 7 years.On the idea of having the executive appoint judges, “Mr. Madison opposed the motion, and inclined to think that the executive ought by no means to make the appointments, but rather that branch of the legislature called the senatorial.”Not surprisingly, they were also all over the place when it came to how the executive should be chosen.The executive to be chosen by the Senate.The executive to be chosen by 2/3 of the SenateThe executive to be chosen by a majority of the SenateThe executive to be chosen by the HouseThe executive to be chosen by state legislatures, each state getting one vote.The executive to be chosen by state governors.The executive to be elected by the people at large. Here the idea was the the president was to be “the great protector of the Mass of the people,” and should therefore be elected by the people at large.On the proposal that the governors should choose the president— a proposal by Elbridge Gerry—the election was to be “made by votes in proportion to their weight in the scale of the representation.”Here’s a report on Madison’s view of the idea of electing the president via the popular vote:[1]If it be a fundamental principle of free Govt. that the Legislative, Executive & Judiciary powers should be separately exercised, it is equally so that they be independently exercised. There is the same & perhaps greater reason why the Executive shd. be independent of the Legislature, than why the Judiciary should: A coalition of the two former powers would be more immediately & certainly dangerous to public liberty. It is essential then that the appointment of the Executive should either be drawn from some source, or held by some tenure, that will give him a free agency with regard to the Legislature. This could not be if he was to be appointable from time to time by the Legislature. It was not clear that an appointment in the 1st. instance even with an eligibility afterwards would not establish an improper connection between the two departments. Certain it was that the appointment would be attended with intrigues and contentions that ought not to be unnecessarily admitted. He was disposed for these reasons to refer the appointment to some other source. The people at large was in his opinion the fittest in itself. It would be as likely as any that could be devised to produce an Executive Magistrate of distinguished Character. The people generally could only know & vote for some Citizen whose merits had rendered him an object of general attention & esteem. There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.You don’t want a president who will be beholden to state legislatures.An election at large by the people would the fittest means of selecting the president.The problem with that is there are are many more eligible voters in the North. If you chose an election by popular vote, Southern states would be disadvantaged, since they are obviously not going to allow their Negroes to vote.And so, we should have electors choose the president.Note that this isn’t talking about large states overwhelming small states. Now, there are some founders who were concerned about that—again, they were all over the place—but what conservatives do, because they have an electoral college that suits them as designed, is to elevate the opinion of one faction among many to the opinion of the founders.History is never that neat. If you think that people who lived 240 years ago just happened to have designed an instrument for the purpose of supporting your ideology, you’re almost certainly deluding yourself.The electoral college isn’t fair. It isn’t wise. It wasn’t particularly well designed. In fact, after the election of 1800, where it wasn’t clear for a while whether Jefferson or Burr would become president, the constitution had to be amended because the founders had made no provision to differentiate a vote for president from a vote for vice-president. And when the reality of parties asserted itself, things had to be rectified.The electoral college as designed wasn’t designed because it’s what a majority of the founders wanted; it just happened to be the compromise that could pass, and it was strongly influenced by the fact that Southern states, where Blacks couldn’t vote because they were considered property, would be disadvantaged by a presidential election by popular vote.Footnotes[1] Avalon Project - Madison Debates - July 19

It had no name.People who are interested in ancient history often make the mistake of projecting modern perspectives and conventions onto it, because they consider them natural and universal. The truth is, they are not. The idea that every religion is a well-defined entity with a brand name (Christianity, Islam, Judaism), a holy book (the Bible, the Qur’an, the Tanakh) and a symbol or logo (the cross, the star and crescent, the Star of David) is fairly modern, quite unscholarly and comes from sources (textbooks, encyclopedias) whose very purpose is to simplify things for the sake of convenience and memorization.The ancient Greeks had a rather different view of the complex phenomenon we now call religion, which by the way is far from monolithic even today. For them, “religion” was more about taking active part in public, communal practices (sacrifices, feasts, rituals, processions, games) than being engaged in individual contemplation of the divine and having personal faith. Those religious practices were so organically and closely connected with the other domains of life that separating religiosity from the rest was unimaginable.This mentality had lots of consequences. With a few exceptions, there were no professional, lifetime priests in ancient Greece—citizens took turns serving as custodians of sacred places the way they shared political offices. There was no holy book or official doctrine either; poets would praise the gods and narrate their deeds for the entire community to hear, but myths were changed from place to place and time to time, and disagreed with each other—but virtually nobody thought that only one of them had to be correct and the rest “heretical.”Apart from all that, concepts like conversion and atheism, which are central to the modern discourse about religion, were also viewed quite differently by the ancient Greeks. People couldn’t and didn’t “change their religion,” because national and local religions weren’t viewed as discrete entities, and monotheism, i.e. the dismissal of all gods save one, was also unheard of. What they could do was participate in the worship of a foreign deity, or introduce its worship to their city, or identify it with a member of their own pantheon—the Athenians, for example, identified the Thracian Bendis with Artemis, and Greeks in general associated the Phrygian Cybele with Rhea.Similarly, atheists were not what a 21st-century Westerner would expect. It’s doubtful that there were people who really denied the existence of anything divine or metaphysical. Some, like Xenophanes of Colophon, were critical toward the anthropomorphism of gods; others, like Diagoras of Melos or Socrates, were accused as atheoi ‘godless’ and/or impious for mocking religious practices or supposedly failing to recognize and honor the state gods. Persecution on religious grounds did exist, but again we cannot be categorical about the content people gave to such accusations. It seems more likely that they had to do with one’s public behavior than individual faith, and it’s not difficult to imagine that even the “hardest atheists” would have no problem taking part in the aforementioned religious practices.Overall, the idea that every religion must have a name and other paraphernalia can be dismissed as anachronism. Greeks simply lived their lives as their forefathers had done before them. Participating in the worship of gods, mostly those of their city, was natural to them. They didn’t need a name to describe it or separate it from its counterparts in other countries.Above: A red-figured vase portraying the preparation of a sacrificial bull. Sacrifice was the ultimate religious ritual and a very important element of communal life.