Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Prep School for Potential Presidents
Prep School for Potential Presidents
Feb 1, 2026 2:43 AM

Now that the presidential race of 2012 has ended it is time—whether we are ready for it or not—for the presidential race of 2016 to begin. Since the next election will not include any incumbents, the question of who has the relevant “experience” to be the chief executive will once again e an issue of primary concern.

What has been missing from previous discussions, however, is a plan for helping future presidential candidates acquire the skill-set needed to be the leader of the free world. That is why I’ve decided to design a preparatory course that would help prepare future candidates for the job, one that would (Acton bias alert) promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.

Here’s how it’d work. Candidates for the course would signal their intention to run for the highest office in the land by applying to head of their political party. Once the candidate was accepted, the DNC, RNC, or third party organization, would fully fund the cost of the schooling and pay the “student” a salary equivalent to a second-term Congressional representative. Candidates would be provided with full health and dental benefits as well two weeks vacation per year.

The 105-week curriculum would begin the week before Inauguration Day and end just in time for the student to organize their campaign for ing primary season.

The course would include the following eight sections:

Section I — Foundation

Course location: Great Books Program at St. Johns College, University of Dallas, or Biola University’s Torrey Honors Institute

A 180 academic day program of reading and discussing with others the great books of the Western tradition. The readings, based on the curriculum of St. Johns College, would be organized into five segments: Literature, Politics and Society, Philosophy and Theology, Mathematics and Natural Science, and History. (For example, the “Politics and Society Seminar” includes: Plutarch: Lives: Lycurgus and Solo, Plato: Republic, Aristotle: Politics, Machiavelli: The Prince, Locke: Second Treatise of Civil Government, Rousseau: On the Origin and Foundations of Inequality, Marx: 1844 Manuscripts, Tocqueville: Democracy in America.)

Time: 36 weeks

Section II — Strategic

Course location: U.S. Army War College/Naval War College

The Army War College and the Naval War College prepare students to assume strategic leadership responsibilities and help them better grasp the fundamental essence of war. The academic year would consist of approximately 180 academic days, split equally between the two institutions.

Time: 35 Weeks

Section III — Diplomacy

Course: State Department (Foreign Service Exam/A-100 Class)

Foreign Service Officers are the “front-line professionals representing the Department of State at all U.S. embassies, consulates, and other diplomatic missions.” Since the president is the front of that front-line of professionals, shouldn’t they be held to the same standard?

I propose that the prep school include a two-week class to prepare them for the rigorous oral and written Foreign Service Exam. Assuming the candidates pass, they’d immediately attend an abbreviated five week version of the A-100 class, the orientation training class for ing Foreign Service Officers on the US Department of State, information on embassy operation and foreign affairs, intelligence collection and dissemination, and the roles different categories of personnel perform in the conduct of diplomacy.

Time: 7 weeks

Section IV — Economics

Course: George Mason University Economics Dept. / Acton University

The curriculum would also include a 12-week crash course in macroeconomics taught by the econ department George Mason University (Bryan Caplan, Arnold Kling, Tyler Cowen, Don Boudreaux, Walter Williams, et al.). The course would include, if needed, a refresher/remedial course on statistics. For the capstone seminar, students would attend Acton University.

Time: 13 weeks

Section V — Management

Course location: Crash-course McKinsey & Company

The global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company has produced more CEOs than any pany and is referred to by Fortune magazine as “the best CEO launch pad.” Prep school students would attend a three-week crash course on business, management, and the “McKinsey Way.”

Time: 3 weeks

Section VI — Internship

Students would attend a six-week internship based on their previous experience. For example, state governors would serve in the office of U.S. Senator to learn about legislative tasks, while legislators would shadow a state governor to learn about the role of the executive.

Time 6 weeks

Section VII — Communication

Course Location: Dale Carnegie training center

Each student would take a one week Dale Carnegie Course on Effective Communications & Human Relations in order to “learn to strengthen interpersonal relationships, manage stress and handle fast-changing workplace conditions.” Additionally, they would, “be better equipped to perform as a municator, problem-solver and focused leader.”

Time: 1 week

Section VII — Constitutional Issues

Students would receive an intense crash course on constitutional issues, with a special emphasis on religious freedom and limits on executive power.

Time: 4 week

pletion, the students would be provided with a certificate pletion a list of donors to begin their year-long session of fundraising.

What courses would you include in a prep school for potential presidents?

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
How the minimum wage affected workers during (and after) the Great Recession
The law of demand is one of the most fundamental concepts of economics. This law states that, if all other factors remain equal, the higher the price of a good, the less people will demand that good. Most of the time this is too obvious to mention. Yet people seem to think we can suspend the law of demand when es to wages. They seem to believe, for example, that increasing the price of labor for low-skilled workers will have...
Review: Light-Horse Harry Lee, the Revolutionary hero and his reckless downfall
Henry Lee III, besides being the father of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, may be best known for his masterful eulogy of George Washington. “To the memory of the Man, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” was Lee’s most memorable line about the first American president. In “Light-Horse Harry Lee,”(Regnery History, 434 pages, $29.99), historian Ryan Cole offers up prehensive portrait of the oft-forgotten Lee whose rapid rise as a brilliant military...
Alejandro Chafuen in Forbes: Aquinas and Bitcoin
Yesterday in Forbes, Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s Managing Director, International, analyzed moral questions of cryptocurrency in light of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. It is an application of centuries-old thought to a very recent phenomenon—but of course, as the article seeks to show, moral considerations are perennial even as their particular objects change. What would Thomas Aquinas have thought of cryptocurrency? Our answer may be a conjecture, but if we look at Aquinas’s body of work our conjecture can be well-informed....
A Spaniard defends Conservative Liberalism
“Conservative liberalism” isn’t a monly used in the United States. Indeed, to American ears, it seems positively oxymoronic. In Europe, however, it constitutes a venerable tradition of political thought and embraces figures ranging from the French thinkers Alexis de Tocqueville and Raymond Aron to economists such as the primary intellectual architect of the German economic miracle, Wilhelm Röpke, and the French monetary theorist Jacques Rueff. As a political tradition, the “liberal” part of conservative liberalism concerns mitment to freedom. The...
The reason women don’t enter STEM professions revealed
Conventional wisdom believes three things: Women areunderrepresentedin science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); this is largely due to sexual discrimination; and the government must redress this imbalance. But multiple studies have discovered a much different reason behind the STEM gender gap. Most media and mentary accepts the theory of “disparate impact”: Any statistical inequality isipso facto“proof” of discrimination. When activistscallthis “one of the most important issues of our time,” opinion-makers nod in agreement. The United Nations General Assembly has passed...
All homeschoolers may have to register with the government
The Department of Education has proposed new guidelines that all homeschool parents must register with the government. Officials say the registry, es as a booming number ofchildren are being educated at home,would be used for government officials to check upon students and assure the pupils are receivingthe government’s definition of aquality education. The UK government unveiled the proposal as another controversial policy percolated through the British school system: pulsory classes about homosexual, bisexual, and transgender relationships beginning in primary school.That...
Christians shouldn’t be surprised to find capitalism infected by cronyism
When anyone criticizes socialism by pointing out the failures of socialist countries like Cuba or Venezuela, its defenders claim, “That’s authoritarian socialism, that’s not the type of socialism we support.” We defenders of free enterprise mock this shift, but don’t we do something similar? When anyone criticizes capitalism, don’t we say, “That’s crony capitalism, that’s not the type of capitalism we support”? Can the two really be separated? As political scientists Michael C. Munger and Mario Villarreal-Diaz write in their...
Beto O’Rourke’s markets and morality mismatch
Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, who famously lost a senate bid against Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the 2018 election, is currently one of the front-runners in the Democratic presidential primary race. He has polled as high as 12% and as low as 5% in recent polls. He raised $6.1 million in his first 24 hours after announcing his candidacy, and a total of $9.4 million in the first 18 days. I have to admit, I don’t get O’Rourke’s appeal. South...
The downside of paid family leave: Denmark
As Republicans unveil plans pulsory paid family leave, they would be well instructed to see how such policies have hurt women’s employment prospects. In Europe, where paid leave is pulsory, women face fewer prospects for advancement than in the United States. Veronique de Rugy, a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, writes about the example of Denmark in The American Spectator. De Rugy, who took part in the first transatlantic “Reclaiming the West” conference in London...
Acton Line podcast: A trial for religious liberty; defining honorable business
On this episode of Acton Line, Trey Dimsdale, director of program outreach at Acton Institute, sits down with Andrew Graham, attorney at First Liberty Institute, a public interest law firm. Trey and Andrew talk about a current case threatening Bladensburg World War I Memorial in Maryland, known as the Peace Cross. The land on which the cross stands was first privately owned by American Legion and the memorial was erected with privately raised funds. Now the land belongs to the...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved