Gary Hart

Guest columnist

We all have our models, prototypes, frameworks, and agendas for sorting the busload of candidates for the Democratic nomination for president. The categories include gender, race, generation, and experience. Some will sort among the several women, some among the minorities, some will want young and others will want older, and then there will be the struggle over who is the most liberal/progressive, as defined by a whole basket of issues.

Let’s step back and assess the situation. By November 2020, we will have had four years of White House and Cabinet chaos, an endless struggle over a Melvillian wall, and most of all the destruction of almost eight decades of relative solidarity among Western democracies and others over security, trade, environment, and economic stability.

This is the reality the next president will face. He or she will have three choices: continue Trumpian isolationism; rebuild the post-World War II alliances; construct a new set of alliances addressing new realities in trade, security, environment, and economic and political stability.

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The latter is the most necessary but the most difficult. It will require the political leadership of a Roosevelt and Truman, the diplomacy of a Dean Acheson, and the leadership of a George Marshall. And it will be carried out against the backdrop of a daunting domestic agenda in health, education, environment, job creation and creative regulation of markets at least as damaged during the Trumpian era as America's stature in the world.

For a few wizened characters like me, this matrix becomes the one through which the next president must pass. Not everyone of the many Democratic candidates is up to it. When the presidency is seen as manager of the fiscal policy (the “economy”) of the nation, the diplomat in chief, and the commander-in-chief of the military forces, this narrows the field quickly.

The newest, the cutest, the funniest, the quickest wit is interesting but irrelevant. That is not to say a new figure, a new voice, a new mind cannot be imaginative, creative, and attractive. That was John Kennedy 60 years ago, and even he made some mistakes in the early going and in an environment much simpler that the one faced by a president today.

We will need a president who can restore America’s stature, dependability, leadership, and respectability. We will need a president who understands the technological revolution soon to encompass driverless vehicles, artificial intelligence, and robots. We will need a president who can negotiate arms control agreements, establish workable trade rules with China, force Russia to butt out of our politics, establish humane immigration systems, and restore some degree of fairness to our tax system.

America beyond Trump will be a study in massive damage repair but also one of enormous new opportunities not seen since the end of World War II. Extraordinary leadership skills, well beyond winning one or two statewide elections, will be required. The standards for selection of the Democratic candidate must be kept very high. Not all of the many putative candidates qualify.

It will be up to caucus attendees and primary voters in all 50 states, especially Iowa first, to take their task very seriously. This is not a beauty contest or a game show quiz. Donald Trump is creating a deep hole for our nation at home and abroad that we must skillfully climb out of.

And it must be said that the press and media should be held to account in this process. The political press adores what has been called the “inside baseball” aspect of elections: constantly changing poll results, the race for money, who has hired the cleverest “strategist," who has what endorsements, and on and on. None of this really means anything in the end.

If the argument for extraordinary talent and skills made here is sound, all the “inside baseball” politics is all ultimately irrelevant. Will we find the woman or man who can pull our country up by its boot straps and set us back on solid ground for a generation at least.

Beyond policy and program, our national self-definition has been seriously damaged by the incumbent’s casual relationship with the truth and his selection of cabinet members. We are and always have been a nation of principles as set out by our Founders. Virtually all those principles have been abused or disregarded. The next president must restore our first principles established in our founding documents and defining statements since then.

We face an uncommonly important national election. It is not a game. It is not a show. It is about the future of America after a four-year march of folly. This is not just a test of candidates. It is a test of primary voters and caucus attendees. We must pray the best person wins for our nation and for what the Constitution calls our Progeny.

Gary Hart represented Colorado for 12 years in the U.S. Senate and is a former Democratic candidate for president.