Calling it his "big idea for 2016," billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens has called for the creation of a "bipartisan screening committee that vets presidential candidates like we do anyone else applying for a job and recommends the best candidates possible."
In a
posting on LinkedIn titled "Let’s Find a Better Way to Elect Our President," the 87-year-old Pickens says "We’ve turned our presidential selection process into a reality TV show. Hell, it’s worse than reality TV. Why? Because this reality TV show is about the selecting the leader of the Free World."
"We have people running for president now who don’t even have experience running a lemonade stand," Pickens lamented, saying the screening committee he is proposing would factor in "leadership experience," "team-building skills," and "a rock-solid plan for their administration" as barometers for qualification.
The idea of a rich oil tycoon pushing for a committee to decide who gets to run for president is not likely to sit well on either side of the political aisle. Conservatives have already accused Pickens of being "a crony capitalist,"
The Washington Examiner noted in May, while reporting that he had endorsed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for president and donated $100,000 to his campaign as it got underway.
Despite the early backing for Bush, Pickens later hosted a fundraiser in September for Carly Fiorina and instructed his staff to look for ways to support Ben Carson,
NBC News reported on Oct. 10.
"He will provide some financial support for him," Pickens spokesman Jay Rosser said, NBC reported. "He likes Dr. Carson."
The Washington Examiner reports the billionaire's personal energy plan for the nation, called the "Pickens Plan," has been praised by President Barack Obama. It has also been
endorsed by John Podesta, 2016 presidential campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton.
Pickens' push for natural gas subsidies was supported in 2012 by Democrats in the Senate before being squelched by Republicans.
Human Events reported at the time that the natural gas subsidies "would be funded through a new tax on consumers that charged 2.5 cents per gallon of natural gas beginning in 2014, with another increase to 12.5 cents in 2021."
"Among the bill’s big beneficiaries would have been George Soros, T. Boone Pickens, [and] Kevin G. Douglas as companies under their control stood to reap the rewards of billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies," Human Events reported.
Soros is a long-time backer of Democrat and left-leaning causes and "Douglas and his wife Michelle have contributed more than $130,000 to President Barack Obama, Democrats and Democratic super PACs since 2009, according to FEC records," Human Events noted.
"I'm not bipartisan," Pickens told the Washington Examiner in May. "I've been voting for Republican presidential candidates since Tom Dewey in 1948."
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