The ancient Greek philoso­pher Pla­to (427–347 BC) wrote: “One of the penal­ties for refus­ing to par­tic­i­pate in pol­i­tics is that you end up being gov­erned by your infe­ri­ors.” For those whose par­tic­i­pa­tion includes choos­ing from the bloat­ing melange of medi­oc­rity being offered for the upcom­ing effort to pre­serve Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy, it might help to apply the Latin word, “col­ligere , the ori­gin of the word “cull”.

The dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion – “to reduce or con­trol the size of (some­thing, such as a herd) by removal (as by hunt­ing or slaugh­ter) of espe­cial­ly weak or sick indi­vid­u­als” – is a bit too lit­er­al, but you get the idea.
“Democ­ra­cy” is a com­bi­na­tion of the Greek words demos (peo­ple) and kratos (rule).  For  the peo­ple half, it’s both fair and wise to note Amer­i­can humourist Mark Twain’s obser­va­tion: “Politi­cians and dia­pers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”
Pres­i­dent Dwight Eisen­how­er made “culling” on the basis of ide­ol­o­gy easy by not­ing that: “Extremes to the right and to the left of any polit­i­cal dis­pute are always wrong.”
Warn­ings on what to avoid abound.
 Author George Orwell, whose pre­scient nov­els “1984” and “Ani­mal Farm” res­onate in today’s mal­odor­ous polit­i­cal hodge­podge, warned: “A peo­ple that elect cor­rupt politi­cians, imposters, thieves and trai­tors are not vic­tims… but accomplices.”
With the fore­go­ing wis­dom in mind, here­with some sug­ges­tions to help “cull” the herd of near­ly a dozen and count­ing can­di­dates for the Repub­li­can nomination.
Reject all those who are ret­i­cent to dis­close the biggest con­trib­u­tors to their  “war chests”, because, as the late Amer­i­can writer Gore Vidal opined: “By the time a man gets to be pres­i­den­tial mate­r­i­al, he’s been bought ten times over.”
Dis­miss rank out­siders who can afford to self-fund. They almost cer­tain­ly had to be smart enough to get rich, but end­ed up with more mon­ey than brains. A prime exam­ple is Vivek Ramaswamy, who has report­ed­ly already put ten mil­lion dol­lars into a cam­paign and seems to think his dec­la­ra­tion that (Trans­port Sec­re­tary) Pete Buttigieg is “like the Diet Coke to my Coca-Cola” makes sense.
Ignore any who con­sid­er vul­gar­i­ty a form of rhetoric. Nik­ki Haley is bas­ing her bid on the basis that “it’s time to put a badass woman in the White House”.
Using the slo­gan “Flori­da’s gov­er­nor has a pair” to hawk golf balls with his name on them says more than enough about Ron De San­tis’ lev­el of couth and culture.
Look to prece­dents like the 1988 pres­i­den­tial race, in which evan­ge­list Pat Robert­son  resigned as a pas­tor to avoid con­tro­ver­sy over the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. Unless Ryan Bink­ley of Texas, who bills him­self as a pas­tor, does the same, he can be waved goodbye.
Heed the obser­va­tion of French Emper­or Napoleon: “In pol­i­tics, stu­pid­i­ty is not a hand­i­cap.”
Tune out would-be can­di­dates like Cal­i­for­nia talk radio host Lar­ry Elder, who make a liv­ing with a micro­phone, if only because they’re more used to talk­ing than listening.
Punch out of con­tention all can­di­dates who, appar­ent­ly unaware they are elect­ed to work,  promise to fight for any­thing and every­thing. The num­ber one rank­ing for that must sure­ly go to for­mer New Jer­sey gov­er­nor Chris Christie, who thinks that in Wash­ing­ton, “you’re going to want some­body tough, who’s a fight­er, but who fights to get to an end, to accom­plish some­thing for you. We can all fight to get headlines.”

                        THE PERILS OF THE BANAL

There is always, of course, the risk that eschew­ing the bump­tious and bom­bas­tic for  the staid will favour the feck­less. So if for­mer Vice-pres­i­dent Mike Pence isn’t bland and point­less enough all on his own, con­sid­er his stat­ed pri­or­i­ty: “Well, I think defend­ing the unborn first and fore­most is more impor­tant than pol­i­tics. I real­ly believe it’s the call­ing of our time.
Can­cel can­di­dates (and any oth­er politi­cians. come to that) who feel the neces­si­ty to tweet banal­i­ties about events to which they are too vague­ly con­nect­ed to influ­ence the out­come or consequences.
Con­sid­er those who respond to mass shoot­ings with instant “thoughts and prayers” fol­lowed by ver­sions of “now is not the time to make this polit­i­cal” beneath con­tempt.
Unsub­scribe those with expec­ta­tions of syco­phan­tic or even con­sis­tent­ly sym­pa­thet­ic Press cov­er­age…”if you can’t take the heat” and all that…
Last­ly, and per­haps most impor­tant, if not com­fort­ing, bear in mind the advice of Amer­i­can states­man Bernard Baruch: “Vote for the man who promis­es least; he’ll be the least disappointing.”
On avail­able evi­dence so far, that’s like­ly to be about the best that can be hoped for, or expected.

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