Why be POTUS?

Test of Presidential Qualifications

Why would you be willing to spend millions of dollars (some it actually your own) to become POTUS? After all the gig only pays about $400,000.00*. Granted there are a few perks, such as:

a $50,000.00 expense account
a $100,000.00 non-taxable travel account
and $19,000.00 for entertainment

There is also that retired presidential pension. The one that has been tied to the then current administration's cabinet secretaries (Executive Level 1). For 2008, that is just under $200,000.00. Does not sound very fiscally responsible, yet you want to manage our economy.

So, as an enterprising individual, presumably already flush with cash (how else could you afford to run an election campaign?), why?

The pay is not that great. The retirement package is decent, the pension is not bad.

I can see only TWO reasons to WANT to be POTUS.

The first is a sense of pride and duty. As a calling to serve your nation and the ideals our fore fathers started with.

Secondly, influence is often worth much, much more valuable than dollars and cents.

So, in a nut shell, to desire to be POTUS is to put a sign around your neck stating you are either crazed by out dated and no longer sociably acceptable ideologies (by current standards).

Or

You are a dirty, filthy, rotten, power hungry scumbag who sees themselves as better than the rest because the rest can be bought, silenced or manipulated to believing you are a NOT a dirty, filthy, rotten, power hungry scumbag.

So, which is it, Mr. Obama? Which are you? The crazed zealot or the scumbag? And what of you, Mr. McCain? Which are you? Oh, and if anyone can find him, ask Ralph Nader the same question.


P.Blacksmith

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_United_States