on politics...

[flea]

I have been thinking about what I would ask the presidential candidates, if I found myself with the opportunity to conduct one-on-one job interviews with them. My big question would be ye olde, "What is your management style?"

We see a lot in the press about likeability. I 'like' Obama, I don't 'like' Clinton, everyone seems to 'like' Huckabee, the press 'likes' McCain. But while I do like some candidates more than others, I hope it doesn't influence my actual voting much. (I realize that not all US voters are analytical like me, of course.)

We also see some comments in the press, and in those online quizzes that tell you who you should vote for, about policy positions. Nobody jibes exactly with my positions, and it feels to me like the differences between, say, Edwards, Clinton and Obama are miniscule.

What I want in a president is, first, someone whose basic stance I agree with. This matters a lot when it comes to things like Supreme Court Appointees and the power to appoint Cabinet ministers, conduct foreign policy, etc - the areas where the president has the most direct power. But second, I want someone who is intelligent and willing to think about decisions and their impacts, and is a good manager, able to delegate to good people when necessary, handle crises coolly and without being an asshat.

So I think if I had to vote for a Republican (which I don't, and I won't), I might well vote for Romney. I may like him least of the Republican candidates; I don't think he actually HAS any values, for example, and frankly I like someone with honest values that I disagree with wholeheartedly (Huckabee, McCain on many issues) much more as a person than someone who twists in the wind the way he does. But he does seem to have a high level of managerial competence (Massachusettians can correct me if I'm wrong). One could do worse (Rudy Giuliani, I'm looking at you.)

I don't have a firm handle on the managerial skills on the Democratic side, except that I know that much as my personal values jibe with Kucinich's, he was an absolute disaster as mayor of Cleveland (where mr. flea grew up), so even if he were electable I wouldn't be in his camp. I am not wild about Hillary Clinton's managerial skills; we saw plenty during Bill Clinton's years in office and one of my major complaints about the Bill Clinton presidency was the managerial incompetence that resulted in stupid time-wasting instead of accomplishing policy. I don't know much of anything about how Edwards or Obama actually run things when they are in charge of things; as senators and campaigners both have certainly had some experience managing things, and I haven't heard much about major screwups by either, but you just don't know.

I hope this doesn't sound dumb; I've never studied government, and I'm no political junkie. Feel free to correct any errors of assumption I've made.

Comments

[ocvictor.livejournal.com]

Massachusettians can correct me if I'm wrong

Oh, we will. As a governor, Romney was a dimwitted box of hair and not much else. He didn't run for re-election because he would lose miserably, and a big honking loss would have squelched his presidential ambitions. Yes, he ran for president before the rest of the country figured out how awful he is.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Now, now. At least he didn't resign while in office, as I think two governors in a row had done, to avoid a scandal. (I know Cellucci was cruising for prosecution, but I'm not sure about anybody else.

Romney's #1 problem in MA was that everybody could tell he was running for president the instant he was elected governor. So he didn't give a shit that he antagonized the state house and antagonized the mayor of Boston and antagonized all the city governments*. He was running for national republican office, and that meant he wouldn't win MA anyway, so it didn't matter that irate democrats were after him with a meat cleaver and a flow-bee.

(* Romney's real infamy comes from the fact that he cut state aid to individual cities, which led to the richer cities being able to pass tax overrides and pay their own way, and the poorer cities being stuck with insufficient funding and having to cut services. Way to govern, Mitt!)

[ocvictor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was the funding to the cities and towns that really did him in, here. The tax overrides everywhere put schools in peril and endangered middle class homeowners. He really was crap as a governor.

[libkitty.livejournal.com]

I got nothing on Romney, but your thoughts on the decision-making process make perfect sense to me. I was just talking to a friend tonight who was concerned about all the fuss made about candidates changing their minds. Certainly, we don't want someone who changes his or her opinion depending on the audience or latest poll. But changing your mind can be a good thing. It can show that you're willing to listen to others, to admit mistakes, and to respond to changing circumstances. I think that considering different aspects (including managerial ability and openness to change) would lead to a more holistic and probably a more realistic assessment, regardless of political leanings.

Of course, I'm not a political wonk either, so who knows.

[zmayhem.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's an accusation that makes me wild with rage at the sheer stupidity of it: "He used to think X and now he thinks Y! She's on record as having said A in 1978 and now she's flip-flopped all the way to B!"

You'd think, after nearly eight years of governance by a man whose sole virtue is the ability to remain loyal and faithful to his opinions even in the face of mountains of contrary evidence, we wouldn't be so quick to scream about people who aren't always convinced they're 100% right the first time for all time, but I swear I've heard NPR's "On The Media" break down several such accusations just in the last few months -- sadly, break them down as in "If you analyze it closely, it wasn't that much of a flip-flop," not "If you analyze it closely, the entire premise is horseshit."

The MAians are bringing up excellent points against Romney, but flea's decision-making process sounds incredibly sensible. Personal likability is nice enough, but it should be somewhere near dead last on any reasonable list of reasons to vote for or against somebody. Should be, most likely won't be. I'm shuddering already at the next ten months.

[libkitty.livejournal.com]

Wrod, my sister, wrod!

I think that a lot of the problem is the word "flip-flop". It's so catchy and negative, that if an opponent attaches it to someone, it must be horrible.

I've been really bad at keeping up with their work, but I think that the Rockridge Institute is working on issues related to words like this.

Unfortunately, they're not working on getting rid of this type of thinking, which may not even be possible, but with using it for liberals as it has been used so effectively in the last thirty years for, well, I don't want to say for conservatives, but for Republicans.

How's that for a run-on sentence!