Well, not if his dad Don Boudreaux has his way. In yet another exceptional letter, Boudreaux writes to a DC radio station:
I’m appalled by everyone who called in today expressing hopes that one day one of their children “might become President of the United States.”
My son, Thomas, is ten. I hope that he graduates from college and has a satisfying and lucrative career. But I’d much rather that he be even a janitor or a used-car salesman than become a successful politician. To succeed at politics – especially at the national level – requires duplicity and shamelessness rivaled only by arrogance. For my son to become President he would have to abandon nearly every moral precept that my wife and I try hard now to impart to him: honesty, forthrightness, decency, respect for others, and modesty. We emphatically do not want our son to yearn for power, for to do so would inevitably corrode his humanity.
Thomas, like nearly everyone else in this world, will be fit to rule himself when he is an adult. He is not, and never will be – again like everyone else – fit to rule others, even if those others elect him to do so.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Needless to say, the validity of Boudreaux’s observations goes beyond America and American politics.