Looking for a Leader
September 21, 2008
With the addition of Sarah Palin to the McCain ticket, the question of what constitutes readiness for the presidency has reached a new level of muddiness. The argument runs that Palin is every bit as experienced as Barack Obama.. so Dems shouldn't complain! And then there was the Mitt Romney proposition that management experience is what really matters.. so Palin is actually ahead of everyone.
What we are dealing with is a mass of confused notions that no one is bothering to straighten out. I would suggest that there are several skill sets that we are looking for in a leader. Instead of conflating them, or acting as if only one matters, we should separate them for clarity's sake:
1) management skill. The president sits atop a pyramid of aids and bureaus. The ability to coordinate these independent individuals and groups poses a purely managerial challenge. This is what Mitt Romney is always going on about: the need to be able to run a state or a business.
2) knowledge of Washington. McCain has little management experience, but he does have inside knowledge about how Washington works. This is undoubtedly his strong suit.. although in the current national mood he ends up running from it as much as running on it. All things being equal, we would want a president who has a deep knowledge of Washington and how to do things there.
3) expertise and ideas. Actual expertise is overplayed on the level of politics. We never, so far as I can see, vote for experts in an important field. It might seem smart to elect an expert in finances or foreign affairs to the office of the presidency, but those people will be disqualified on other categories. What we want is someone intellectually engaged with the currents of our time and broadly knowledgeable of the issues that face government. We can tolerate someone who does not know everything about the financial crisis, but not someone who can't grasp the central political issues inherent in the crisis.
4) character and personality. This one looms frustratingly large in America. But like it or not Americans want a president who can stand as a role model and who can meet our emotional needs in a time of crisis. This is perhaps the first and most obstinate hurdle to running for president. People have to be able to imagine an individual coming on television in a time of crisis.
5) judgment and issues. I find it funny that right wing types are always challenging people to name legislation that Obama has authored.. because I know very little about what bills any politician, including McCain and Biden, has authored. The Bush years were pretty lousy when it comes to realistic opportunities for passing progressive legislation.. impossible, in fact. So what I (and I think others) listen for is stances on current issues and a coherent sense of where the country might go. Past public judgments about the economy and foreign matters also add to the candidate's profile, allowing me to see how a candidate "tends" to think and act.
One other issue to bring up is that although we want to think of an election as one candidate vs. the other, in truth both candidates bring with them a team of people. We could think of the race as McCain & Co. vs Obama & Co. Each will have a slate of technical experts, management gurus, and personal advisors to help them out.
Thinking about the above categories the difference between Obama and Palin stands out clearly. So far it seems that while Palin has some management experience and has a personality that appeals to some, she fails completely when it comes to a category such as #3.. and is questionable when it comes to #5. Listening to Obama talk and it is clear that he is engaged with issues and has ideas about where we should be going as a nation. And his engagement goes way back.
The "experience" issue that used to be McCain's great card is connected to category #2 and only in a tangential way with #3. McCain knows his way around Washington, but is there anyone who believes he has an intellectual grasp of the Middle East or the economy? He is a Washington mover and shaker who picks up his talking points from conventional wisdom. McCain also should not get a pass when it comes to personality. I liked what Nicholas Kristof had to say in his column today:
(Just imagine for a moment if it were the black candidate in this election, rather than the white candidate, who was born in Central America, was an indifferent churchgoer, had graduated near the bottom of his university class, had dumped his first wife, had regularly displayed an explosive and profane temper, and had referred to the Pakistani-Iraqi border ...)
