10 tips for picking a better president

By Jennifer Rubin 

The president at the podium announcing air strikes against the Islamic State in Syria and the maps of bombing sites should remind all Americans that we are at war and will be at war against jihadists for some time. President Obama hasn’t liked that idea but there is no “ending wars” unless the other side gives up or is obliterated. The next president will be a commander in chief in wartime as well, so we should choose someone who has understood events to date, supports a coherent war plan and whose judgment and determination we can rely on going forward. That seems like a tall order, but we can improve our chances of finding  one who will not repeat Obama’s errors if we select:

President Obama makes a statement on recent U.S. and allied airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria.  (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

1. A candidate who has military experience or feels comfortable around and can trust military commanders. This president failed on all counts and the result is military commanders spinning for the president and the commander in chief spinning political maneuvers as acceptable military strategy.
2. A president prepared to act decisively with the best military strategy available to him, free from conditions and prerequisites that delay action until the enemy is dug in. Airstrikes make for good maps and video but, as Max Boot and countless other military experts tell us:

Their military significance is likely to be scant until the U.S. can do more to train and arm forces capable of mounting ground attacks on ISIS militants. Already six weeks of U.S. air strikes in Iraq have failed to dislodge ISIS from its strongholds; there is no reason to believe that six months of air strikes in isolation will work any better. As former Defense Secretaries Bob Gates and Leon Panetta have said, it will take “boots on the ground” from the United States to galvanize and train the potential anti-ISIS forces. But because President Obama is so far prohibiting U.S. troops from working alongside anti-ISIS fighters in the field, “there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell” of the current strategy succeeding–to quote the succinct summary of retired Gen. Jim Conway, former commandant of the Marine Corps.

3. A commander in chief who puts the military first in a line of budget priorities.
4. A leader who levels with the American people. As Boot puts it, “ No one doubts that the U.S. can launch air strikes on ISIS. The question is whether those attacks will be effective in degrading and eventually destroying this terrorist group. The answer is: not until there is an effective ground force able to take advantage of the disruption created by American bombs. Until that happens, ISIS will stay on the offensive.”
5. A chief executive who knows he needs top flight advisers. A president surrounded by hacks and cronies is too arrogant to know he needs help and too ignorant to devise effective policy.
6. A person with integrity and determination to  get the facts straight. In a telling incident Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) got caught smearing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in a way to bolster his own skewed vision of events (i.e. don’t trust the Free Syrian Army), leaving longtime McCain adviser Mark Salter to observe that “unless he is staffed by the most incompetent imbeciles in politics, Paul has been informed there isn’t evidence to support the accusation and much evidence that refutes it, not the least of which is that some of the people identified in the photograph have been killed by ISIL. . . . He is trying to fashion a more mainstream political profile, and he’s not above using deception and the defamation of a fellow senator and a patriot to do it.” Like Jay Carney, recently chastised by McCain on CNN, bad policy begets a penchant for making stuff up.

7. A politician who understands the difference between talk and action. This is one reason why it is so problematic to select from the Senate, especially among lightly credentialed ones. They got to where they are and stay in the limelight by talking up a storm, forgetting that this is not the same as setting or implementing policy.
8. A decision maker. President George W. Bush was ridiculed for saying he was the “decider,” but that is precisely what a president is. He shouldn’t be an avoider of bad news, or a picker of a course of action he is least likely to be blamed for or a brawler who can not sublimate politics to national security. You have to know when you have enough information, when time is of the essence (or not) and when to acknowledge a past error (which in Obama’s case that would be never). If you sweat and second guess every decision or are paranoid about getting bad advice, paralysis sets in.
9. A modest enough man or woman to recognize his or her mere presence and charm will not bend events and adversaries his or her way. Relationships are important between allies, helping to bolster confidence and gain support. But better to be feared than patronized by our foes.
10. A student of history and his own presidency. The irony was that Bush — lambasted as isolated and ignorant — is a voracious reader of history and took it upon himself to retool a failing war policy. Obama is the one sealed off from reality. (With example after example Bret Stephens observes, “Every administration tries to spin events its way; every president gets things wrong. Mr. Obama is not exceptional in those respects. Where he stands apart is in his combination of ideological rigidity and fathomless ignorance. What does the president know?”)
There are no perfect candidates, but we really should eliminate from consideration the ones so obviously unsuited to the presidency. This is no time for self-delusion.