Ben Carson for Vice President! - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Ben Carson for Vice President!
by

It may be thought that as an Australian I have no right to publish an opinion on American politics, but the whole world has an interest in who leads America. Your hopes and fears are ours. So, as one who has watched Obama’s policies of defeatism, retreat, and serial blundering with dismay, here goes.

Dr. Ben Carson has many qualities that make him superbly suitable for high office: he has, pre-eminently, brains and force of character. No one can read his biography and fail to be impressed by his achievements and credentials.

He is a fine speaker, and his background is, unlike Obama’s, an open book. He even (an unfortunately relevant consideration in the modern age) looks presidential.

On every comparison with Obama of fitness for the office, Carson aces him: a brilliant neurosurgeon who rose to the top of his profession, contrasted with a “community organizer” and lawyer who as far as I know never conducted a trial in his life. Unlike Obama’s Nobel Prize, Carson’s awards have been earned.

He has no links with the Weather Underground or with America-hating, anti-Western Marxists like the cunning and venomous Saul Alinsky or race-baiters and constitutional wreckers like Jesse Jackson, Eric Holder or Al Sharpton. It is impossible to imagine him or one of his milieus chanting on a university campus: “Ho, ho, ho! Western Civ. has got to go!” He seems proud rather than ashamed of Western civilization and its achievements.

He has none of Obama’s nauseating smarminess. His brother has not been abandoned by him to penury and semi-starvation in an African village —his brother is an aeronautical engineer. He appears to care deeply for the bedrock values of Western scientific and technological civilization, where Obama’s attitude seems flippant and cavalier at best, contemptuous at worst. 

Most importantly, and unlike not only Obama but unlike most other Western leaders today, Ben Carson’s life story is a testament to what can be accomplished by sheer will-power.

He has spoken eloquently of the value and need for science and technology as part of the essence of civilization — no deranged nonsense about converting NASA into a feel-good agency for Muslims. He showed real perception in pointing out how disgracefully the rewards for sporting prowess in the education system eclipse the rewards for scientific achievement. Like Churchill, he seems to see the need for Western and Christian civilization to be sheltered in “the strong arms of science.”

As far as one can tell, he comes across as the kind of man Vladimir Putin and, as far as it is capable of rationality, ISIS, would be reluctant to mess with. Putin’s open contempt for Obama wouldn’t fly with Carson. Beside him Kerry, whose record of statesmanship in bringing peace to the Middle East speaks for itself, and Clinton of Benghazi and the vast right-wing conspiracy, look pathetically shallow with their records of failure and falsehood — cardboard cut-outs of the leaders of a superpower rather than the real thing.

It shows the utter bankruptcy of talent among the possible Democrat candidates that even Biden has been seriously suggested in some quarters. Carson displays, even if his career had not proved, that he possesses extraordinary intelligence and substance rather than glibness. Everything suggests that, like the great leaders who saved the West from the previous onslaughts against it — Churchill, Reagan, Thatcher, Truman — Ben Carson compared to Kerry or Clinton is teak compared to papier-mâché. Charisma is a much-abused word, but at a time when not only America but Britain and the West in general have been suffering from a real deficiency of leadership, Ben Carson has shown he has that charisma that grows out of real inner strength.

He is a man, and comes from a family, that America can be proud of.

I believe that one of his gifts might be to reduce the separation between people and government that the present administration has created.

But with all the very powerful positives going for him Ben Carson has, apart from the fact that he has not yet thrown his hat into the ring, an Achilles’ heel: a lack of political experience. Going from a childhood in a black ghetto to head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins certainly implies political experience and expertise of a sort, but a President Carson now would carry the stigma of amateur, and America and the world cannot afford two amateur presidents in succession.

Eisenhower was of course a successful President (apart from his bungling over Suez) despite having no previous experience of political office, but Eisenhower was an exception and came to the White House during the Korean War with a thorough insider’s knowledge of Washington and after being tried in the fiery furnace.

Vice President is a different matter. Vice President Carson might well attract the African-American vote or a significant portion of it to the Republican ticket, help heal the racial tensions and divisions Obama has willfully exacerbated, and hold up an exemplar of achievement and a fine man to American youth of all races.

In The World Turned Upside Down British journalist Melanie Phillips writes: “By electing Barack Obama as president of the United States Americans wanted to redeem their country’s original sins of slavery and racism.” It was a fantasy, and as fantasies in politics have a way of doing, turned into nightmare.

By electing Ben Carson, Americans would show the values that made their country the greatest in the world are still alive and vigorous. A Carson vice-presidency, an acknowledgement of intelligence and achievement, would be something healthy, realistic, and positive.

It might mean the real healing of America from the wounds Obama and his henchmen have inflicted upon it, would be a ringing affirmation of traditional values, and at the same time would “ease” Ben Carson into high political office. He would be the perfect VP now, and, depending how he performs in that office, perhaps an excellent president later.

Sign up to receive our latest updates! Register


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

Be a Free Market Loving Patriot. Subscribe Today!