Thread by @MattGlassman312

My gripe with all POTUS debates is candidates perpetuate the myth POTUS can snap fingers, make laws. The real q’s are:

1 What’s your foreign policy?
2 What agenda will you prioritize for Congress?
3 What’s your cabinet look like?

The rest is green-lanternism, of the worst kind.

We spend all this time debating the legislative presidency, a small and shared part of the job. Obv, it’s important to know candidates domestic agenda, but I’d prefer *at least* equal time devoted to discussions of governing and/or foreign policy, where the presidency is vital.

We do get foreign policy questions sometimes, of course. We almost never get governing questions. A few good ones:

1. What do you look for in a SecState or WHCos?
2. What’s your governing style/experience?

This is all a pipe dream, of course. Voters don’t care about FP or governing, so the vote-driven parties don’t care and the ratings-driven media doesn’t care. But you should care. The presidency is, first and foremost, about governing.

Having little or no debate about governing creates candidates and POTUS who are less prepared for the job than they should be, having no incentive to even think about governing as as a prerequisite for electoral success.

TL;DR: I’m a weirdo who votes for president based on my sense of their (1) ability to handle an international crisis; (2) their foreign policy: and (3) their governing ability.