Are you running for president?” For aspiring presidents who haven’t fully committed to running, the question is almost impossible to answer in a way that sounds genuine. “I haven’t given it much thought” means “I’ve been planning to run since I was a teenager but haven’t decided if this is the year.” “I’m not sure my family is ready to make that kind of commitment” means “I’ll be in Iowa next week and New Hampshire the week after that.” “Right now I’m focused on the job of governor” means “Of course I am, you idiot.”
The most unseemly answers, however, are the ones in which the would-be commanders in chief pretend that running for president would be a form of self-renunciation: a sacrifice, yes, but a sacrifice that, given the grave circumstances in which the nation finds itself, they just might be persuaded to make.
In this category, we’re not sure we’ve ever read a more cringe-makingly false answer than the one New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand offered to late-night show host Stephen Colbert. “It’s an important question,” she began. Indeed, “I believe it is a moral question for me.” Ah, a moral question! “I believe right now,” Gillibrand went on in a clearly rehearsed answer, “that every one of us should figure out how we can do whatever we can with our time, with our talents, to restore that moral decency, that moral compass, and that truth of who we are as Americans. So I will promise you I will give it a long, hard thought of consideration.”
If Gillibrand sounds as though she’d been asked if she intended to retire from politics and run a soup kitchen in the Bronx, that’s because she’s running for president.
