@Olivier5,
It's okay to call out people as ill-prepared for a prospective job. Sometimes it's true. Assessing the known strengths and weaknesses of a person and measuring them against the problems they are likely to face is done all the time. Both candidates have a long history of public service and it's fair for seasoned columnists to raise these point if, for nothing else, to enrich political discussion.
When I hear phrases like "champion of the people" I'm left asking "What people?" There are all kinds of people. Who gets to choose which particular subset of the human population gets to assume the role as the
real, the
authentic people? What's the criterion? The "people" vote for LePen and Brexit, the "people" elected Putin, Duterte,and Trump, the "people" don't want to pay taxes, the "people" don't want to vaccinate their kids, and the "people" can barely be bothered to inform themselves to a sufficient degree to make intelligent choices on the ballot.
There's a Christian theme running through this glorification of the "people" as portrayed by the historic left and the right-wing neo-populists, that somehow the meek and the downtrodden are more perfect in the eyes of the creator or something and we're all waiting for Judgment Day when the tables will be turned and the justice will be served. The whole concept gives me the heebie-jeebies — it's politics based on a convenient moral fantasy, because after all, you and I are part deserving "people" too. The best case for any political action is that which can be argued without reference to morality or appeal to sentiment.
"Incrementalism" is not really a prescriptive belief system; incrementalism is a descriptive
result, the result of the delays, derailments, and disasters caused by the breakdown of the political process in liberal democracies worldwide. It's difficult to enact social change when each side is intent on undoing the other side's work and the sides are split roughly fifty-fifty.
