The reason we get so much incompetent government in the United States is that we have so many incompetent voters. I don’t really blame politicians for egregious behavior because in almost every case we could have predicted it. We dare them to be bad.
Given what is at stake, it would behoove us to make the effort to choose our presidents wisely. I don’t expect this to happen, but this does not stop me from suggesting how it could be done.
A little information about my particular interest in the presidency might be helpful. I began to study Harry Truman many years ago, and I have collected essentially every worthy book written by or about him. They fill about six feet of shelving. I also have a collection of Time, Life, and Look magazines that featured him on the cover over the years. I have a sheet of 8 cent stamps that bear his picture. You get the idea.
In order to put him in a context I read about some other presidents. My favorite among the rest is George Washington. I nominate Washington as the most interesting president we have had, partly because he was president during the most interesting time our nation has ever had, and partly because he was totally remarkable as a person.
I also went on to read about the practical aspects of the presidency as a job and a leadership role. My favorite book in this category is The Presidential Difference, Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton. The author is Fred Greenstein. Greenstein examines the presidents’ behavior, temperament, and capabilities in specific areas. These are public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence.
John Kennedy, for example, was brilliant as a public communicator, but was comparatively weak in organizational skills, and his philandering suggests that his emotional intelligence was flawed. George W. Bush’s tormented cognitive style provides enormous fodder for comedians. Our presidents provide spectacular failures and inspiring successes in each of the areas that Greenstein examines.
I find Greenstein’s criteria relevant to the task of evaluating candidates. One of the reasons I find candidate debates so painful to watch is that the cognitive style of most candidates requires them to oversimplify nearly everything so they can generate sound bites. Listening is nearly non-existent during campaigns, and nuance is anathema.
What happens when we evaluate the emotional intelligence of our current batch of candidates? As usual, there is no shortage this year of strutting and swaggering, Ron Paul being a laudable exception among the Republicans. Strutting is born of a cognitive style that only recognizes stark distinctions of being absolutely right or absolutely wrong. We all know what it is like to work with such people, and we know the effect they have on organizations.
Stephen Hess wrote Organizing the Presidency, in which he profiles the same series of presidents who appear in Greenstein’s book. In this group we see the whole gamut of management styles from buttoned-down Dwight Eisenhower to improvisational and flirtatious John Kennedy. Presidents organize the White House in a way that reflects their knowledge, skill, temperament, and luck (or lack of it). If a candidate is pushy and overbearing those qualities will be carried into the Oval Office where they will affect performance and morale, and where they will determine who is heard and who is not.
We also should note if we agree with the candidates about the scope of the president’s job. Here is a definition that I like:
[The President's] major responsibility, in my judgment, is each year to make a relatively small number of highly significant political decisions—among them setting national priorities, which he does through the budget and his legislative proposals, and devising policy to ensure the security of the country, with special attention to those situations that could involve the nation in war.—Stephen Hess
Most candidates present themselves in the debates as a jack-of-all-trades who can work on countless fronts simultaneously and deliver miracles almost daily.
We know candidates’ ambitions are inappropriate to their abilities, but hearing them boast gives us an opportunity cheer and wave flags, which many voters seem to enjoy. Cheering and jeering are more fun, and take less hard work, than actually measuring their ability, emotional maturity, and competence for a tough job.
To summarize, I recommend the following:
- Learn something about past presidents with an emphasis on how their strengths and weaknesses correspond to the results they produced.
- If you don’t already have one, develop a set criteria for evaluating presidential candidates. Also develop a notion of how broad the president’s job ought to be.
- Seek the counsel of people you trust to evaluate candidates thoughtfully. My personal favorite is Robert Reich.
- Separate emotion from objective evaluation. I fear that an increasing number of voters support candidates who are willing to bully people the voters don’t like.
- Study the candidates’ history. They will take their imprinted values into their new job for better or for worse.
The one-step analysis for evaluating candidates might simply be, would you want to work for that person?
