The POTUS and Character

This is what Bertram S. Brown, M.D., a psychiatrist who formerly headed the National Institute of Mental Health and was an aide to President Kennedy said about character and the presidency:

The White House is a character crucible. It either creates or distorts character. Few decent people want to subject themselves to the kind of grueling abuse candidates take when they run in the first place. Many of those who run crave superficial celebrity. They are hollow people who have no principles and simply want to be elected. Even if an individual is balanced, once someone becomes president, how does one solve the conundrum of staying real and somewhat humble when one is surrounded by the most powerful office in the land, and from becoming overwhelmed by an at times pathological environment that treats you every day as an emperor? Here is where the truth strength of the character of the person, not his past accomplishments, will determine whether his presidency ends in accomplishment or failure.

In other words, you want to elect someone that has good character. For that to happen you have to know about his or her character. And that takes research on the voter's part if the press does not do their job.