Why does the West produce such crappy presidential material?

[Generic Other]

Is it something in our water? We see ourselves as embodying the last of the rugged individualist spirit. The last frontier image we so carefully nurture in our strip malls and tourist kitsch. But we have antisocial attitudes. We don't like strangers. We are saints when we are not being sinners. We are like every bad cowboy movie ever made. We see ourselves on the freeways fighting rush hour traffic -- the modern equivalent of the Marlboro Man wild and free on the plains. They've bamboozled us all into believing this is our nature.

And we nurture really crappy public servants out West. McCain, Palin, Romney...Reagan, Nixon, Cheney. What a legacy!

I am a Westerner and I don't understand. What do they have in common? Ability to lie without remorse? A swaggering persona? Fake charm? Bullies? What? Are they charismatic? Why do they always seem about to get the upper hand?

It seems so clear they are the bad guys.

[fishwax]

1. Romney is less of a westerner than Bush is a Texan

Less, even, than Bush I was a Texan.

[Generic Other]

7. The Bushes are fake Westerners and Southerners too

but Romney's family and religious roots are in the West, and Utah is the promised land of all Mormons. He is their prophesized savior. Guess it doesn't matter whose basement he sleeps in.

[fishwax]

14. yeah, but being Mormon is still quite different from being a westerner

Utah is the center of the mormon church, sure, but its origins are eastern and its Garden of Eden is in Missouri. (Utah is also noticeably different in character from much of the rest of the west, though it does have some similarities.)

As for Mitt, his formative experiences were almost all east of the Mississippi. Born and raised in Michigan and despite going west for his undergraduate education finished his education in Boston, which is also where his political and professional life was based. His father might have had some of the western character in him, I suppose (though he, too, spent the majority of his life elsewhere), but Mitt doesn't strike me as western in character at all.

[Generic Other]

18. An indigenous religion with many holy sites but one mecca...

One of the common aspects of life in the West for a long time is the idea that everyone is a transplant. If you make it West and stay awhile, you are a Westerner. The West doesn't have as long a history as the rest of the country. People are descended from outcasts, migrants, goldrushers, pioneer farmers. The myth of the West is alive in our attitudes. We often give up and go back East, but I don't think we ever escape being Westerners. It's not a matter of birth. It's a history. A sense of shared space. What's left at the end of the trail.

But I will concede Romney is one once or twice removed.

[JI7]

2. Romney is the west ?

[Generic Other]

3. His core values come from his famly's Mormonism

his father was a westerner. So I include him. Also he has a car elevator out here.

[Generic Other]

4. Unless you don't think Utah is ingrained in that family

as I do.

[Retrograde]

12. Mormonism was founded in New York, FWIW

They ended up in Utah after being driven out of several places in the east.

Mitt himself is from Michigan, and has lived in Massachusetts much of his adult life.

[HiPointDem]

21. mitt's dad was born in mexico & grew up in utah.

[BlueStreak]

5. Puppets

The important decisions are made by the old money. This Presidential stuff is just entertainment for the masses.

I can't say it is different anywhere else, except of course the full dictatorships and the countries that have recently overthrown dictators.

What they all have in common is their ability to lie convincingly and their willingness to do so. Obama doesn't fit quite so easily into that mold, but you haven't seen him press the Fed or Wall Street in any significant way, and he most certainly hasn't prosecuted any of the war criminals or financial criminals of the past decade.

[iemitsu]

6. i think its called rugged anti-intellectualism.

we specialize in it out west.
our heroes are formally uneducated or under-educated but well versed in street-smarts. they best the city slicker who is green in this neck of the woods. they tell tall-tales about their 3 hour marathons, the 38 peaks they've climbed, and the granny they mugged on the corner.
the west is filled with rejects from the civilized east. we are anti-everything including work, so characters, such as you identify, can easily harness our disaffections and ride them to power.

[Generic Other]

10. Yes, you capture the very spirit I was talking about

I don't much like being ridden!

[iemitsu]

17. bucking burro.

you don't like being ridden do you?
neither do i but then i don't much like having to ride others either. so if someone else volunteers they get the job.

the mormon experience is western. driven from the east over behavior seen as unacceptable by polite society. viewed as outlaws by others and sometimes behaving as outlaws, the mormon identity is separatist and anti-establishment at its core offering anthropomorphism as its ultimate reward.
be your own god, the ultimate rugged-individual.
mitt and his tall tales and pranks. hahah, what a jokester?
he may have been raised in michigan but he embodies the western spirit.

[Scootaloo]

8. Winner-take-all system

The winner-take all system grants total victory to anyone who carries a majority of the votes, even if that's just the guy who got 2% out of 100 candidates that averaged 1%. Under this system, "second place" counts for nothing, much less third place - this is why through history there have only ever been two parties at the national level, because since only first place matters, all you need is one contender for it.

This percolates through the system, to the point where you have two parties trying to cover a lot of ground, which results in the two not usually having very much difference between them, regardless of which parties we're talking about. There's enough difference to justify two parties, but not enough to really rally the political interest of Americans; thus the apathetic adage, "the parties are the same, why bother."

Ultimately, both parties spend hteir time trying to capture the votes of that tiny and usually utterly disinterested fragment of the population, since otherwise the split is generally 50/50. These morons - we politely term them "undecideds" as if they are defined by deep, critical thought - have thus always been the people the parties campaign towards.

So. When we have a system where there is no real competition, no incentive to explore new ideas, and the target audience are people who vote based on whether the candidate drinks coke or pepsi, you're bound to get lousy politicians more often than not.

Frankly put, we may have invented modern democracy, but other nations have improved on it and are quite ahead of us.

edit: I thought by "the west" you meant "the western world"... oops.

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. How many Westerners have been President?

Nixon. That's it. He was born in California. Romney's from Michigan. His father was born in Mexico. His *grandfather* was from Utah, but that no more makes him a Westerner than my grandfather's birthplace makes me a Kentuckian.

[Generic Other]

15. I include ones like Reagan and Palin and McCain who represent Western areas

Westerners are usually born in other places.

Romney has a strong cult connection to his version of "mecca." His family is made up of westerners who transplanted themselves to other places. He attended BYU. He is connected by his Mormonism, by his belief in his destiny as a Mormon savior to the center of the hive.

But you are probably right. He is too rich and important to perceive himself as a Westerner. To him, anyplace he buries his money is home.

[grantcart]

11. How far West can you get than Hawaii?

[Retrograde]

13. You beat me to it!

And for the last several national election cycles, the West Coast states have voted Democratic.

[Generic Other]

16. Hawaii didn't nurture that jackass Western mentality that infused those other politicians

Hawaii embraces diversity. It is the sort of place that could nurture a man like our president, where he could be somewhat free of the crushing weight of racism other African Americans have experienced in America. He could grow up confident, intelligent, with strong self-esteem. He was lucky to grow up in that island culture.

Don't you think Hawaii did a good job raising their native son?

I was just wondering about the failures. How their Western mentality influenced them for the worse.

[grantcart]

20. so you don't think that California, for example, doesn't nuture diversity.

Here are the U of C ethnic statistics where Asians almost outnumber Whites in 2007.

http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2007/fall_2007_admissions_table_a.pdf

[tech3149]

19. Aw Hell, it's not just the west!

We as a nation are almost beyond stupid. We have beyond short term memory, we're lucky if we can remember last year. We've had just as many disgraceful candidates and politicians from the east as the west.
I think the real problem is we, as a nation, think we're special. WTF? Do we need different resources to live? Can we live if the entire world has been either poisoned or raped so it cannot support life?

Here's a thought, the most affluent in the world think that they can survive even when they are poisoning the world around them.

To answer your question, we have been poorly educated for decades (more than a generation). We have been dumbed(can we ever get an accurate spell check?) down since the 50's originally through television.
Then we had this radical reaction to communism that demonized anything that smacked of socialism/communism or anything that threatened the concentration of power.
Here's a challenge for you. Go do some internet search, and go to a library that's been there for 50 years. Check out the history books and compare the content and viewpoint between those that you find with regard to labor history.
Even better, take that information and compare it to history in the textbooks in your school district.
We are not taught our true history through the public school systems, and that is by design.
Research the Powell Memorandum.