On Obama's Inner Circle Encouraging Duval Patrick To Run

I've been asked by someone offline what I think of the story that Barack Obama's inner circle is encouraging the former governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick to mount a run for president in 2020.   I have great respect for Deval Patrick and like him but I have come to think it's not a good idea for someone who has not been working in Washington as a member of the government to be President.   Jimmy Carter, the last president who I can say I respect without immediately hedging and Bill Clinton were both people of enormous intelligence and ability but they didn't know the territory and their administrations suffered from that.  Being governor of a state is hardly the same thing as being president.  Both of them brought people with them who probably shouldn't have been given such prominent positions in a presidential administration because they didn't now the territory and some of who were played by those who do.  Some of them seemed dazzled or worse, Janet Reno, for example.  

If Deval Patrick had gained several terms in the House and distinguished himself there or in the Senate or in a cabinet post he might be the kind of person I would consider supporting but he hasn't.  And he is a Harvard product.  I will only vote for another Ivy League or Ivy-equivalent product if forced to.   I am serious about the dangers of people educated into the Ivy League way of thinking for the United States, I think it's time to cut that old school tie that is strangling us, the elite thought that is part of the education and acculturation of those institutions.  He also graduated from The Milton Academy as an A Better Chance, student.  That Duval Patrick has come from a very humble beginning might be enough for him to have resisted that way of thinking but that, alone, is no guarantee of rejecting it and being able to make it clear to those around him that he has rejected the prep-Ivy League networking trap. 

We need a candidate who will not get played by people familiar with Washington and who won't be overly impressed with the DC area establishment.  We need someone who combines Jimmy Carter's morality and decency with Lyndon Johnson's tough and, yes, ruthless pursuit of things like his Great Society Programs, someone who is wise enough to not get suckered into a foreign entanglement as Johnson was by the "Harvard boys".