There are way too many people running for president.
It’s obvious to everyone with a semi-functional frontal lobe that either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis will be the Republican nominee. I suppose it’s even possible a series of highly unlikely events could land Nikki Haley or Mike Pence at the top of the November ticket.
But why is Francis Suarez running? How does Doug Burgum think his odds look? Does Rick Scott think we need a fourth Floridian in the race? Can Asa Hutchinson read a poll? And who the hell is Will Hurd?
It’s not that they’re all bad candidates. I like a lot of what Vivek Ramaswamy says. But he’s not going to be president. We all know it, and I’m sure he knows it, too. (RELATED: QUAY: Nikki Haley Can’t Win The GOP Primary. So Why’s She Running?)
It’s frankly cringe-inducing to watch grown adults soak up applause and donor cash for explaining how they’d do a job they’ll never get to do. We might as well give a CNN town hall to a kid in a Burger King crown who has big plans for how he’ll rule Narnia. He has the same chance of pulling it off as Larry Elder, and just as much skin in the game, too.
“There is, it now seems, no obvious downside to running for president and ‘losing,’ when ‘losing’ is as seductive as it is,” Charles C.W. Cooke wrote for National Review in April, when the field was much smaller than it is today. “[E]ven our no-hopers are guaranteed by their mere participation to gain bigger contracts on the radio, larger advances on their books, higher speaking fees on the road, and a great deal more besides.”
So how do we fix that problem? Easy. If you run for president and lose in the primary, you have to cut off one of your fingers.
Some would say this solution is too lenient and that we should require full-on seppuku. I disagree. Some failed candidates go on to do good work in other elected offices. Think Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz.
Others manage to win the presidency on a subsequent try. Reagan ran unsuccessfully in 1968 and 1976, meaning he’d have had eight fingers when he moved into the White House. Joe Biden, who dropped out in 1988 and 2008, would also be down two digits. I wonder which would be worse: four fingers each on both hands, or five on one and three on the other?
Go for it, Rick… https://t.co/OwwM8epSvb pic.twitter.com/HYNRKGXmlU
— Grayson Quay (@hemingquay) June 22, 2023
There’s a certain nobility in it. You make your concession call, knock back a double whiskey, bite down on a wooden spoon, make sure you’ve got enough towels handy and reach for your cigar cutter.
There are plenty of reasons to run for president — pushing your pet policy proposal, taking potshots on the debate stage (*cough* Chris Christie) or trying to drag the eventual nominee further to the right or left. For some candidates, those goals might justify the loss of a finger. Marketing your book or building your mailing list would not. (RELATED: ‘Don’t Count Me Out’: Fox Host Presses Chris Christie On His Presidential Chances)
For a candidate who genuinely aspires to take control of the nuclear codes, the federal bureaucracy and the world’s largest economy, hazarding a digit is perfectly reasonable. Anyone with that level of ambition is usually willing to sacrifice for it. This is as it should be. The great tragedians understood that the man who overreaches risks his own downfall.
Our massive fields of primary candidates incentivize displays of presidential-sized ego but without any of the seriousness and commitment that should accompany it. Not only does genuine ambition carry no cost, but empty boasting brings ample rewards. That kind of frivolous self-aggrandizement isn’t good for our politics or our culture.
If you shoot for the moon and miss, you don’t land among the stars. You burn up in the atmosphere or freeze in the endless vacuum of space. That’s why we admire people who literally shoot for the moon. A random guy who poses in a space suit with zero intention of boarding the shuttle deserves none of that admiration.
Now, obviously we can’t force failed presidential candidates to actually slice off a finger. We could, however, take other steps to keep non-viable office seekers out of the race. Congress could pass a law to prohibit campaigning earlier than 12 months before election day, preventing candidates from spending months in the spotlight before a single ballot is cast. States could put only the five highest-polling candidates on their primary ballots. The parties could even return to smoke-filled rooms, which offered fewer opportunities to preen in front of news cameras.
All of these proposals have downsides, of course. But if it means I don’t have to watch something called a “Perry Johnson” pretend to run for president anymore, I’m open to any of them.
Grayson Quay is an editor at the Daily Caller.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.