On November 3, we picked the man who will lead our nation for the next four years. It is imperative to remember that neither one of the candidates were perfect beings. Over the course of our country’s history, we have falsely begun to assume that the president should not hold flaws. 

   While believing this we have overlooked the checks and balances put in place by our ancestors. They never intended for the leader to be a completely perfect man. There is a reason our country has over 200 elected officials.  All with different responsibilities to different sectors of our magnificently complicated government.

  While it is shameless to hope for our leader not to make mistakes, it is also senseless. When Washington left office he told the people that “in reviewing the incident of my administration I am unconscious of intentional error nevertheless I am too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.”    

       Washington knew then and we ought to know now that the president will not make errors always, but from time to time make a wrong decision (except President Bartlet he always made it work in the end… of course he was a fake president).

       Somewhere in our long history, we have held our current leaders up to a standard we believe was set by past presidents. What you and I forget is that the good old days were not as good as we like to believe. Presidents have been just as polarizing as they are now. Politics is not new. It has been around since before our flag was flying, these political remarks, ideologies, and systems we have today have likely been debated in the chamber of congress before.

  To further demonstrate, I would like to let you in on a conversation last week that Abraham Lincoln and George Washington had over coffee (tea still gives Washington a level of synesthesia). Though this conversation is entirely fictitious, the content of it highlights how even two of our greatest leaders contributed unfairness, inequality, lack of compassion, and downright bad policy to our history.

      WASHINGTON:Over 40 presidents. And 27 amendments. I remember when we wrote the constitution, we figured 13 amendments max! Slaves were freed over one-hundred years ago and the country still has racism. When are people finally going to live up to the preamble of the constitution?

LINCOLN: Well you set such an example of treating everyone equally so-

WASHINGTON: Oh yeah? What about you and the natives? You stole their land and mistreated them.

LINCOLN: Now wait a minute, we both did that…

WASHINGTON: I do not understand how we built airplanes before letting women vote.

LINCOLN: Wait, women can vote now?

WASHINGTON: And you Mr. Emancipator allowed a war to go one for like 4 years. The world was created in under a tenth of that time.

LINCOLN: And one day you will have to tell us all how you did it! While you are doing that you can tell everybody how you let your troops starve and how it took you 11 hours to paddle across the Delaware River.

WASHINGTON:  Sure… let them know how you thought about sending all the slaves back to Africa.

LINCOLN: Well I figured since your administration forcefully migrated thousands of men and women, I would but make it a reunion. Neither one of us has been a perfect pacesetter, so let us hope the next generation thinks of something better.