Why are Presidents of the USA treated as villains?

As an example, I'm from the state of Nevada. Even if there's a primary for a Senate seat, that covers a state larger than the UK with more than three million voters. The only people with the ability to put a foot into the running already have networking abilities and tons of money in comparison to 95% of their constituents. For President, now you're talking about covering nearly half a continent in a country of ~315 million people. Even if a third of them voted^* which would mark a historically astronomic rate of voter turnout you're still talking about someone who needs to do a good job at appealing to a majority percentage of 100 million people.

edited 5th Mar '14 3:00:09 PM by BlueNinja0

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

As has indicated, isn't there a certain level of progression occurring? If you get good guys in your state house than they will become the experienced guys you can elect to the senate and then to president.

edited 5th Mar '14 3:01:08 PM by SilasW

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

The problem with that is quite often, experience == corruption. And by quite often I mean almost always.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Well than you guys have a problem...

By god foruming while on the London Underground is hard.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

A cultural problem, far wider than just mere Politics, I'd suggest.

Something where change can only happen due to...experience, or at least an effort to actively reduce corruption with a culture that deplores open corruption, nominally-independent authorities with teeth and courts unafraid to question and prosecute politicians of all colours, including from within their own party.

edited 5th Mar '14 3:24:38 PM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On

Our current President, Barack Obama, worked his ass off to get a Bachelor's Degree, then enrolled in Harvard Law School, where in addition to the hard work of attending law school at one of the most prestigious academies in the world, Obama also volunteered time as editor of the Harvard Law Review. He took a job at two separate law firms while attending university, and after three years, graduated magna cum laude.

He worked as an attorney and a teacher for six years following his graduation, while also contributing to the state of Illinois, serving on the board of directors for a handful of different charities while also directing a campaign a campaign to reach out to African-Americans in the state that had never registered to vote.

In 1996, after impressing the state of Illinois with his accomplishments, Obama was elected to the State Senate, where he served three terms in office - winning the 1996, 1998, and 2002 elections, but losing in 2000 - before moving up the ladder and being elected to serve as a United States Senator representing the state of Illinois in 2005, and finally proceeding from there to the United States Presidency in 2008.

That is how you get elected. It is a lifetime of hard work and achievement.

edited 5th Mar '14 3:22:59 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

The counterpoint, Tobias, is George W. Bush, who had a lifetime of business failures and hand-holding from the family before becoming President.

A lot of countries have more restrictive campaign finance/marketing laws. That proposal isn't so unreasonable.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Villains in positions of power are a good source of dramatic tension?

On a more cultural level, I'd say it roughly boils down to "Richard Nixon ruined it for everybody".

And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)

Even if you did that you would have to remove superPACs or it would all be for naught.

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins

At least for the US I think this might be the reason. About half of the voters will have voted for the other guy or not at all. Of the people who did vote for the president some, maybe even a majority voted for him because he was the lesser of two evils. The fact that they're lesser doesn't make them good.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

Just because it works for other countries doesn't mean idiots won't object because it restricts their freedom or something.

That brings out the other path, attaining power in politics by means of the influence of one's family, and the concept of "American royalty", where politics is a family business.

Reason number infinity that I'm glad Mitt Romney didn't win the presidency.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

It's the way our system is. As long as the big two are the majority it's always gonna be bipartisan grabassery. Good is what my party does bad is what the other guys do. If you're a Republican, Democrats think you're a bible thumping gun toting racist. If you're a Democrat, Republicans think you're a gay Commie pinko atheist.

"If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking"- George S. Patton

I agree with The Bat Pencil, in that treating US presidents as outright villains in fiction really took root thanks to Nixon. Before that, it was mostly fringe groups that claimed any given president was in the pocket of the Illuminati/Catholic Church/Communists/organized crime. With a president that actually acted like a crook, the floodgates opened.

I'd say that Americans have an odd, love-hate relationship with law and order. Just judging by the procedural on TV and in film, we celebrate dirty cop, the rugged macho men who keep people in their place; following no rulebook but their own. And yet anyone above that — IA, defense lawyers, feds, and politicians — are almost always the villains. Even the Army is portrayed as one more needless obstacle for the stubbled hero to overcome.

I'm a skeptical squirrel

Didn't Obama also receive "help" from the MAFIAA, which influenced his politics when it comes to intellectual property? (ACTA, TPP, etc.)

Gotta hand it to Romney, he had the better words and rhymes. Except for the puppet part.

And Lincoln's line "The president shall not be the shiniest of two turds" was awesome.

edited 6th Mar '14 3:21:58 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Relevant especially at the end.

Who watches the watchmen?

The candidates that show up on the primary are decided largely by straw polls that are indicative of only a district or two local to whichever candidate paid the polling agency the most money. They're also very heavily suspected of being tampered with on top of that — statistical analysis of primary polls leading up to 2012 show Romney's support compared to the other candidates to be very anomalous when compared to similar polls in the same area.

For instance, by the time I got the Republican primary ballot, any moderately sane people like Huntsman had long since been weeded out and Ron Paul may well have been the least offensive person left on the ticket.

If your party currently has an incumbent already in the office and eligible for another term, they basically don't get primary competition at all unless under extreme circumstances (physically in jail or something — which has happened once or twice). Typically, positions with an incumbent from that party won't bother including any other candidates in the primary ballot at all.

edited 6th Mar '14 11:40:03 AM by Pykrete

It's especially amusing given the people behind ERB (along with a number of Youtube personalities) visited the White House and met with Obama last week.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Presidents are like Celebrities, they're held to a higher standard of morals. Which in this case would be somewhat justified considering they're the head of America and hold actual sway over U.S. politics. Thats why I think Presidents, at least in the last couple of decades anyway, are viewed harshly

I love being irrefutable

Full Blast: Very much so. I would say this applies to all world leaders though.

Who watches the watchmen?

Not necessarily. Some world leaders, or at least Obviously Evil dictators and those like them don't really care about morality and aren't expected to be moral. I think the US president is held to a high standard because patriotic US citizens see the country as a whole as the "good guys" and those it fights as the "bad guys", so the president is sort of held to the standard of being the Big Good. Not to mention that the US government is a world superpower and as such feels the need to and is expected to intervene in world affairs as some sort of "international police", telling other countries what they can and cannot do, and holds itself as a sort of (self-)righteous "protector of the weak", unlike other some other superpowers that are thought of more as "bullies".

edited 6th Mar '14 7:13:00 PM by shiro_okami

The "Obviously Evil" dictators to whom you refer generally see themselves as the "Good Guy" and the USA is not widely seen as a "Good Guy" outside of the USA since the only "weak countries" the USA has "protected" are those who have oil reserves and other things the USA needs (and where the "bully" is significantly weaker than the USA) - and the US President is the one the rest of the world can point at and blame as the Big Bad.

Outside of the USA, the President is not reviled for failing to live up to the propaganda he spreads to the US citizens, he is reviled for being a war-mongering bully who abuses the privilege of having the military might of a world superpower at his bidding.

It has caused more unjustified hatred of the USA in general, and US citizens in particular, than anything else, since the US President is seen as "typical" and "representative" of US people.

Oh like New Zealand would be any better.

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins