[b3lvedere]

Most leaders who did horrible things or stayed on way too long in power in their respective countries have had some serious brain malfuction.

Makes me wonder why we, for instance, require absolutely healthy sane fit people to send to the the Olympics, a space station or the moon, but leading an entire country requires only extraordinary charisma and absolutely nothing else.

[roxolotl]

Douglas Adams had it right:

> Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

[disgruntledphd2]

Didn't he yoink that from Frank Herbert? Not that it matters who said it, but I'm sure similar sentiments are somewhere in the Dune books.

[kccoder]

Sure, but as has been demonstrated lately, some are more unfit than others. If you replaced Trump with Romney or Obama or some other equally capable, sane person, our situation would be immeasurably improved.

[Ekaros]

Is being sane really a qualification for Olympic participation? From my lazy ass point of view the effort needed to be Olympic level athlete tells about some level of dysfunction...

[b3lvedere]

Should be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_of_Nancy_Kerrigan

[AnimalMuppet]

"Leading".

The thing is, in order to lead, you need people to follow. Otherwise you're not a leader, you're just some loudmouth.

So it makes some sense that leading a country means being the kind of person that people are willing to follow. It's the "only" and "absolutely nothing else" parts that are the problem.

[b3lvedere]

Indeed that's the problem.

So we need some mandatory check(up)s on extraordinary charismatic leading people who have the power to wreak havoc when they are making stupid desicions.

We (as a species) are not really getting better at that, aren't we?

[chinathrow]

> Otherwise you're not a leader, you're just some loudmouth.

Looks like you can be both. And a puppet at the same time.