After considering the possibilities of businessman, governor, senator, general, and agency head, Jane Galt concludes that I'm not sure that any job really prepares you to be president of the US. I generally agree with her assessments of the professions she mentions. So perhaps the US can take a cue from the business world and look into horizontal hiring. Corporations today tend to get their top-level guys by stealing them from similar positions in other companies (which as I understand it is part of the reason executives are paid so much), rather than the old-fashioned system of having people work their way up from mail clerk to vice president. All we'd have to do is get rid of that pesky "natural born citizen" requirement, and we could start electing people who had actual experience as the leader of a nation. I mean, what else are Ehud Barak or Nelson Mandela doing these days? And maybe other countries could do likewise. I can definitely see Jimmy Carter stepping into the presidential palace of Botswana, or Bill Clinton in the Dominican Republic.