http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/12/15/1460651/-If-the-Last-Republican-Debate-Did-Not-Scare-You-You-are-Unscarable?detail=email
One of the ways I evaluate pretenders to the presidency is what I call the October Test. I remember walking home from school one day in October of 1962 to parents who seemed unusually subdued and glued to the television set. Over the next few days, I noticed that they watched a lot of news broadcasts. (This was before cable news. Midnight to midnight, Monday to Sunday coverage of important events like the Jodi Arias trial had not yet been perpetrated against the American public.)
It all passed, nothing changed in my young life, and I forgot about what I never had paid much attention to anyway. It was not until decades later that I picked up a book on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Other books and TV documentaries followed as I began to understand how deeply frightened a lot of people in knowledgeable positions had been and how close we had come. Delve into those two sobering weeks and you never again will look at politics or politicians in the same way.
Now, I try to imagine a candidate in the role of JFK. I try to imagine that candidate, huddled with whomever I think they might surround themselves with, waiting for the next communique from Moscow and facing Armageddon. I try to imagine whether they would have the character and the prudence, the steadiness and the humility, the patience and the creativity and the overall judgement that it took to save the world during those dark negotiations.
Last night, that pathetic collection of belligerent, sable rattling, self-amplifying warmongers, each trying to outdo the other like schoolboys, failed the October Test — and not by a little. I am properly scared.
