VDH is right on the money! Good grief, please, stop nominating lawyers!
In the Democratic primary, winner Obama, runner-up Hillary Clinton and third-place finisher John Edwards were all lawyers. In 2004, both Democratic nominees, John Kerry and Edwards, were lawyers. Al Gore, who ran in 2000, left law school without a degree and went into politics. His running mate, Joe Lieberman, was a Yale-trained lawyer. Mike Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, was a Harvard-trained lawyer and ran with lawyer Lloyd Bentsen.In fact, every Democratic presidential nominee for president and vice president in the last seven elections -- except Gore who dropped out of law school to run for Congress -- has been a lawyer. ...
So, what's wrong with the Democratic nominee once again being a lawyer? After all, legal minds are trained to think precisely and evaluate both sides of an issue.
The problem is that lawyers usually do not run companies, defend the country, lead people, build things, grow food or create capital.
If this year Democrats were looking for populist candidates from diverse backgrounds and training who talked and thought differently from those of the past, then why didn't they nominate someone who was not trained in writing legalese and working the government legal labyrinth?
Lawyers are great when they're needed, but at this point they certainly don't bring a "fresh perspective" to Washington! The District of Columbia (277 lawyers per 10k residents) has almost 15 times as many lawyers per capita as New York, the most-lawyered state (20 lawyers per resident).
So yeah, skin color and genitalia are one dimension of diversity, but maybe it's time to think outside the lawyer-box. I guess when your only goal is to run for office so you can boss people around fix our broken country, it's hard to imagine any other path.
