In parts of the world, lives and battles lost more than 1,000 years ago still get human blood boiling.

For revenge.

For this and other reasons, revenge-lust usually seems to me the very definition of rock-headedness.

I am inconsistent, however, but not without reason. Had I been alive in 1941, I would have supported our entrance into World War II in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. No doubt about it.

I supported the military response in Afghanistan that followed the terrorist attacks of 9/11, whereas I vehemently opposed and marched against the extension of that war to Iraq and the hash our leaders made of things. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a blood-thirsty despot, but he had not attacked the United States. Something else pushed the second Bush Administration to start that war.

I knew a councilman in a small Washington city who used his position to settle personal scores. He made no bones about it. He certainly tried to get even with the newspaper I worked for because I’d written about his fondness for settling personal scores.

The voters did not elect “Smith” because they wanted him to satisfy his lust for real or imagined wrongs done him. They elected him to be about the city’s business, and better their lives if he could.

This “don’t-make-it-personal” standard should apply up the line from the greenest of greenhorns to the very top. We all know, or should know, that we should never elect men and women to public office to indulge their lust for revenge.

“I don’t get mad, I get even,” Smith liked to say.

But when people hand the power vested in the highest office in the land to someone who believes he or she is entitled to revenge, the logical endgame will see that person weaponize the power of the federal government to smash their enemies.

A sledgehammer to the skull.

We absolutely, positively, do not need any more public servants poured from that mould. People who marry policy to their desire to crush, destroy, and grind to dust. The perpetrators make poor politicians and really stupid policy.

Therefore, I propose a modest improvement to the calculations we make when we elect our leaders, as follows, though in smoother language:

No aspirant to the office of president shall use the power inherent in his or her position to engage the office of the Attorney General, the FBI, the U.S. Marines or anyone else to settle personal grievances, or threaten with deportation citizens whom that official hates.

And they absolutely must take a legally binding oath to that effect when they stand for election to the office and face stiff consequences should they violate that oath.

What say you, readers? Love to hear from you.

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Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@soundpublishing.com.