Several years ago when I was living in Jakarta, Indonesia, a Chinese-Indonesian friend took me to see a Javanese shadow puppet show. She explained that in Javanese legends, 80 percent of the beautiful characters had good souls while 20 percent were evil on the inside. Conversely, 80 percent of the physically ugly characters were evil, while 20 percent were kind, moral people. These tensions between external and internal beauty were the basis of all conflict in the stories. They also explained a lot, at least for me, about Javanese society and the life my friend must have led, since the Javanese consider Chinese facial characteristics unattractive.
Later when faced with several interpersonal challenges at work, I adapted this strange Javanese moral into a more constructive personal maxim which helped me stay focused on my organization’s end goal of producing sound, effective foreign policy: the well-liked person doesn’t always make wise policy and sometimes, the biggest jerk does. It was true. Some of the greatest people I knew – guided by a strong ethical code, an even temper, compassion, understanding, and a clear sense of duty and honor to country – they stunk at making wise strategic policy choices. And some of the most obnoxious people I ever knew, well, they excelled at it.
This happens in business as well, but I think when profit is not the bottom line, it is easier to conflate personal qualities with the quality of the decision-making that comes out the person. If you are evaluating a CEO, you can track the way the company performed under that person – its growth, its employee retention, its profit margin. You cannot really evaluate something as nebulous and multi-faceted as long-term foreign policy with a spreadsheet or an investor’s report. So you end up evaluating the man or woman, and hoping that it gives you a clue into the kind of decisions they will make. This also happens in the reverse, where people look at the President’s policy and assume it tells you something about him or her.
But in my experience, that’s not a useful measure. The current President is a great example of this. He has tremendous numbers of critics who deplore his policies, and they assume he his an odious person to be around as well. The reality could not be further from the truth. The Secret Service, the people who really see the ins and outs of life under all kinds of conditions in the White House, by all accounts, they love this President. People who know him well – political enemies and friends alike – say he is one of the funniest, most considerate people they have ever met. Another example? Jimmy Carter, a very generous and well-intentioned activist, is, in my opinion, the worst president we have ever had. His latest debacle with Hamas is just embarassing. The best example of all? Richard Nixon, whose personal failings completely obliterated the legacy of one of the greatest foreign policy geniuses of our time.
Now, sometimes the jerks make dumb decisions and the delightful people make smart ones. But not always. Thus, when weighing presidential candidates, I think it is unwise to use the man or woman’s personal life and style as a litmus test for their ability to be President.
I feel compelled to spell out here that this maxim of mine should not be construed as an endorsement of Obama, because it is definitely not. It should also not be taken to mean that I think Obama’s pastor’s comments or Obama’s own about “bitter” Pennsylvanians are right or appropriate – I personally find it all deplorable.
But I think that we, as a citizenry, should vote for or against Hillary, Obama, or McCain based on what kinds of professional decisions they have made. Do they have a track record of making wise choices that indicates they possess the strategic thinking necessary to be a good President? It doesn’t matter if I like them or not. It doesn’t matter if they have a crazy pastor or not. What matters is – can they do this job, the one that at the end of the day, has no handbook, no roadmap, no fail-safe?
I realize this is a somewhat brutal perspective to take, but making decisions on a daily basis that affect the welfare and security of billions and write the history of the modern world, that is a hard job. To look for a “perfect” man or woman to do it is ridiculous. As voters, we have to elect the person who will make the best decisions possible. And as tempting as it is to use their friends or their comments in off-hand moments to judge that decision-making, the truth is that we should dig deeper into the boring, day-to-day on-the-job decisions that they have made in positions of power so far. We should ask the blogworld and the media to do the same, because that is the only spreadsheet by which we, the public, can fairly evaluate these potential leaders. To judge them by only an ephemeral image created by media clips and sound bites, is to miss, as the Javanese warn, the twenty percent whose internal nature and ability do not match the external image they project.
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