Trick question. They are all retarded. Modern politicians are more akin to business owners and bureaucrats than the fabled statespersons of yore. All have million-dollar endorsements from this name or that corporation or some celebrity hoping to cash in on another fifteen minutes of fame. They are all bought and sold by someone, and pay us lip-service so that we fall into their trap of believing the bullshit in order to further a career. Many are afraid of Trump. They shouldn't be. A rational mind would know that all he is, is a demagogue that riles up the masses in order to garner votes. Were he to win, he would be much of the same as the last dozen or so Presidents. Same with Hillary. Same with Cruz/Bush/Sanders/insert random person here. The POTUS has limited powers that are easily countered or circumvented by Congress or SCOTUS, as it should be. They are more a Head of State when it comes to international relations and the CiC of the Armed Forces. I personally think that the powers of the Office of the POTUS should be more limited than they are today.
The last truly great President we had was Eisenhower. He was a champion for smaller government, stabilized the economy by reducing spending on many frivolous programs, stimulated the economy by creating millions of jobs from the interstate highway network, encouraging the private sector, providing government subsidies for higher education and many other similar programs. He also scaled back the role of the Federal Government, and was the only POTUS to warn us about the Military-Industrial complex, which, when I have more time, will explain how our Defense spending actually operates. He also was a massive champion of Civil Rights, desegregating Washington D.C. and the Military, worked to pass some of the first legislation to desegregate the US, including appointing most of the SCOTUS Justices that ruled in favor of desegregation in the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, knowing full well that they would be what finally breaks through. He was an incrementalist that feared Federal intervention in states rights, yet was wholly against discrimination. He campaigned to appeal to persons' hearts and minds instead of trying to force unpopular at that time laws to affect change. He ended a very deadly and unpopular foreign war by pressuring both Congress and the Chinese to accept terms for a ceasefire, balanced the budget to a federal surplus THREE separate times (no POTUS before or after ever did), he kept us out of Vietnam, even while the French were begging for our intervention, something his successor, the much more beloved JFK did not do, he pushed for the first steps to defuse the Cold War (until Khrushchev canceled the Paris Peace Conference of 1960) and generally worked hard to modernize the nation, supporting scientific studies and breakthroughs that we benefit vastly from today. Sadly, someone like him would be very unpopular in today's age because he was a believer in self-reliance. He gave millions of people the tools necessary to succeed, but refused to outright give them what they wanted for free. The closest candidate we have had in years would be Ron Paul; second would be his son, Rand Paul.
Interestingly enough, I have seen many publications, such as the Wall Street Journal and Forbes Magazine, show how analytics project that the only candidate out of all fields whose economic policies would result in a net gain and not add to the national debt would be Rand Paul. We don't need more statist republicans or socialist democrats. We need independents who focus more on the creation of jobs, equality in the workplace, states rights, scaling back unnecessary spending, reducing tax burden on the citizens, capping tuition rates for public institutions, removing religion and political slant from national policy and who is not bound by party politics. He is not perfect, but would be a better choice than the rest. Next best is Sanders, because he is less affiliated with deep pockets and political entities, but anyone with any true knowledge of economics will tell you his proposed policies will not work. The problem with the American health care industry and our post-secondary education institutes is simply because they have become big business. They still get government subsidies and funding as if they were not, but still cash in on the American populace. There is no easy way to make free health care and education work in the US, (more on that later as well) but there are ways to make it affordable to all and still provide excellent quality of service. If anything, the Affordable Care Act has actually increased the costs of health care, reduced coverage, and prevents many people forced to choose it to get long term maintenance care for diseases/disorders such as depression, diabetes, cancer, et. al. It is good for the underemployed to get treatment for the sniffles, but the out of pocket costs for the average subsidized health care plan would bankrupt the average American for catastrophic emergency treatment or long-term treatment for debilitating diseases. One interesting side-effect of the ACA was many other health insurance providers had to change their plans in order to become compliant with much of the Act's legislation, reducing coverage for subscribers and increasing costs for them as well. I would know. I went from having Humana, which was great before ACA, then when my deductible went from $500/yr to $4500 with less coverage as well as my premium increasing by $102/month, I dropped it and went to Obamacare. It covered FAR LESS and had a HIGHER deductible, but was $105/month total as opposed to $228. I wizened up and went to Tricare because of my Military service. It covers EVERYTHING for $91/mo with a $350/yr deductible. THAT is the model of how health care should work. Cheap, effective, and all hospitals are required to accept it for emergency visits. Why not just use a system similar to Tricare to cover ALL Americans? Tricare works so well because it pegs prices to a certain level, and hospitals have to accept it at those prices. No $100 for a $0.98 bag of IV solution or $89 for two Tylenol 500s. The reason why we don't all have health care like that available to us all is because big pharma would lose out the ass.
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