While musing on presidential ambition, Betsy Newmark observes:

I’ve always thought that, other things being equal, I would prefer someone who has done something else in his or her life besides being involved in government.

Me too. If one looks at recent history, the Republican nominee with the fullest, most profound political philosophy, the one who’d thought most seriously about the role of government and its relationship to individual liberty, was Ronald Reagan, who formed his views while doing other stuff. If instead of spending the Fifties doing movies and TV and speechifying for GE (and reading National Review), he’d been a Congressman or Senator, I doubt he’d have developed any kind of coherent worldview.