A wacky idea

I was watching an interview with Michael Good, NASA mission specialist, who is a member of the final shuttle flight to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

And I got to thinking. Getting to be an astronaut is difficult -- the competition is fierce, and the number of candidates is much larger than the number of positions. The credentials for every one of them are long and impressive. Astronauts are expected to be intelligent, good at problem solving, adaptable and good in a crisis. They are expected to work cooperatively and get along with other astronauts and experts from other nations. They are given media training, and kept in top physical condition.

In other words, kind of the same things we look for in a president.

So here is my wacky idea: Maybe we should hand over the running of the executive branch for a while to the astronaut corps. (Not to NASA, of course -- Washington already has one beauracracy in the Congress.)

Maybe I'm still getting over my disappointment that John Glenn was never president (I wish he had run against Reagan or Bush Sr. instead of going up against Bill Clinton in the primary), but the astronaut corps, with few exceptions, consists of outstanding, dedicated, hard-working people.

Just the kind of people we want running our country.