Has the Quality of Candidates for President Declined?

Without Question! It is now at its lowest iteration.

Has the Quality of Candidates for President Declined?
by BURT folsom  on JULY 11, 2012

Yes, it has. In The American Presidency, historian Forrest McDonald laments the steady downturn in the quality of leaders who run for president. That decline has been most notable since the 1930s, when presidential candidates, with Supreme Court approval, sidestepped the Constitution and began to offer federal subsidies to targeted voting groups.
Granted, quite often politics is not a profession that attracts people of high character. But before Franklin Roosevelt, most American presidents were competent leaders. Government was limited, so presidential contenders could not win by promising federal cash in return for votes. To win his party’s nomination, a candidate had to have experience in politics or the military, and to acquire that experience the candidate had to display a certain level of leadership. And frequently that leadership translated into presidents who made capable decisions that improved American prosperity and national standing. Rutherford B. Hayes, for example, supported a controversial decision that backed U.S. paper money with gold. Hayes did not get renominated by the Republicans, but he guaranteed the national integrity of our currency. Four years later a Democrat, Grover Cleveland, vetoed 414 bills and thereby lost his re-election bid. But he had budget surpluses every year of his term. U.S. credit abroad was strong, and American economic growth achieved world recognition.
In the 1930s, however, Franklin Roosevelt promoted massive federal spending, and he doubled the national debt in seven years. Unemployment was at 20% even after seven years of FDR’s New Deal. But what was bad for the nation was good for FDR because he carefully targeted his federal spending to carry key states in his re-election campaigns.
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