I attended a program about the Kennedy-Nixon Debates, which were the first televised presidential debates. This poem was inspired by remarks about the difference between politics then and politics now.

Give Me a Skillful Manager

I yearn for the days
when politicians were
engineers not ideologists.
Their decisions were not
pre-packaged, but freshly made
as called for by circumstance.
They did not vote against
other people, but other principles.
They practiced what seems to be
the forgotten art of doing
what is right at the time.