Hiring a President

Skills for the Job

There are many books on leadership; one I like is Warren Bennis' On Becoming a Leader. Bennis cites four competencies that a leader must have:

"Engage others by creating shared meaning" "Have a distinctive voice" "Integrity" "The one competence that I now realize is absolutely essential for leaders -- the key competence -- is adaptive capacity"

For (1) and (2), you can make up your own mind; to get this far, both candidates have shown an ability to connect with their supporters.

For (3), I believe both candidates are motivated by public service, have a deep desire to do the right thing, and are driven by ethical and religous convictions. Kerry is a long-time regular church-goer. Bush is not, but makes a point of his born-again conversion. (I should note that other critics are less charitable; many Democrats and Republicans believe that the other party's candidate lacks integrity, and many Greens and Libertarians think they're both bums.)

The big difference between the two candidates, frankly, is that Kerry is trying to view the world as it is, and to choose the best action based on reality. Bush's campaign is centered around denying reality and choosing actions despite reality.

In other words, Bush does poorly on the integrity test because he deliberately misleads the American people, and he scores lower on adaptive capacity than anyone I've ever witnessed. You might think that each candidate would be clamoring to show how adaptive he is. In fact, the opposite is true -- Bush highlights his "resolve", while Kerry combats charges that he "waffles". It was only in the first debate that Kerry raised the obvious point that "you can be certain and be wrong." Bush, it seems, prefers to be certain, because he can not believe he could be wrong. This is the opposite of adaptive capacity, and it is a dangerous thing to have in a leader at any level, but especially in the president.

A 10/17/04 NY Times article by Ron Suskind quotes Republican policy advisor Bruce Bartlett says that Bush "dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts" because "He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence." In a CNN interview, Bush supporter Pat Robertson described his meeting with Bush on the eve of the Iraq war: "I warned him about the war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, `Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.'" Robertson said that Bush told him "Oh no, we're not going to have any casualties." Similarly (according to the Suskind article), Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) warned Bush about growing problems of winning the peace a few months before the war, but Bush was unconcerned. Biden finally said "How can you be so sure when you don't know the facts?" and Bush replied "My instincts." Suskind describes a White House senior advisor explaining all this by pointing out that relying on facts and an analysis of the world is for the "reality-based community", which the president has gone beyond. He is part of a new reality-creating community: if he doesn't like the facts, he can ignore them, change them, or create a new reality. This is an astonishing way to do politics, but a disasterous approach to leading the world.

I have to say that I started out with higher hopes for Bush's adaptive capacity. One of his first major decisions was on stem cell research. I initially applauded his decision, which seemed like a reasonable compromise. Over time, however, we learned from Christopher Reeve, Ron and Nancy Reagan, and a majority of scientists that it was in fact a highly-restrictive decision. And it was one of the last times we saw a compromise from Bush. Not that compromises are always the best solution of course, but the problem with Bush is that he doesn't consider the facts long enough to arrive at a good solution.

Bush has enjoyed good success with his strategy of ignoring reality -- at least with his supporters. On a wide variety of issues, his supporters hold incorrect views, either because they believe what Bush has told them, or because they would have to give up their support for Bush if they didn't believe them. A report by the Program on International Policy at the Univ. of Maryland polled Bush and Kerry supporters on the following issues; percentage of support for each statement is shown for Bush and Kerry supporters:

Bush Kerry Statement Fact 72% 26% Iraq had WMD before the war False (Duelfer report) 75% 30% Iraq provided substantial support to al Qaeda pre-9/11 False (9/11 commission) 63% 15% Clear evidence for Iraq WMD was found False (no evidence) 58% 92% War would have been wrong if Iraq had no WMD, was not supporting al Qaeda Matter of opinion 61% 17% Bush would not have gone to war under those circumstances Matter of opinion; probably false 31% 74% Majority of world opposes US war in Iraq 38 of 38 countries oppose the war (Gallup poll) 9% 69% Majority of world favors Kerry victory 30 of 35 countries favor Kerry (GlobeScan/PIPA poll) 51% 21% Islamic world favors US-led efforts to fight terrorism 11 of 13 countries oppose US efforts (people-press.org)

This shows that Bush supporters are extremely ill-informed, or that Bush has successfully mislead them on these issues.

The PIPA study goes on to see how accurately supporters view their candidate on policy issues. Here we show the percentage of Bush or Kerry supporters who think their candidate holds each viewpoint:

Bush Kerry Viewpoint Fact 69% 77% Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Bush no; Kerry yes 72% 79% Treaty banning land mines Bush no; Kerry yes 51% 74% Kyoto treaty on climate Bush no; Kerry yes 53% 65% US in Intenational Criminal Court Bush no; Kerry yes 74% 81% Favor labor and environmental standards in trade Bush no; Kerry yes

In each case, Bush supporters tend to agree with Kerry's viewpoint (numbers not shown here) but falsely believe that Bush agrees with them. In each case Kerry supporters are accurate in assessing Kerry.

Bush is in a difficult position. If he admits his mistakes, he stands no chance of re-election. His only hope is to deny reality and hope his supporters don't notice. So far his strategy has kept the race very close, although he still has less than a 50% approval rating.

But the strategy of ignoring reality doesn't make reality go away. On 10/26/04 we see reports from the Iraqi interim government that "major neglect" by the US military has led to the assassination of 49 Iraqi army recruits. Earlier, on 10/25/04, we saw that 380 tons of high explosives are missing, again due to neglect.

Expert Reports

The most surprising endorsement to me was the American Conservative magazine's endorsement of Kerry. It is old news when left-wing extremists claim that Bush is a far-right radical, but here one of the leading Conservative magazines is saying that Kerry is closer to traditional conservative ideals than Bush is, stating that "Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations." and that "few have paid attention to how much the Bush presidency has degraded the image of the United States in the world. Of course there has always been anti-Americanism. ... But Bush has somehow managed to take all these sentiments and turbo-charge them. ... The poll numbers are shocking. In countries like Norway, Germany, France, and Spain, Bush is liked by about seven percent of the populace. In Egypt, recipient of huge piles of American aid in the past two decades, some 98 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States. It's the same throughout the Middle East."

The American Conservative goes on to say "The hatred Bush has generated has helped immeasurably those trying to recruit anti-American terroristbsindeed his policies are the gift to terrorism that keeps on giving, as the sons and brothers of slain Iraqis think how they may eventually take their own revenge. Only the seriously deluded could fail to see that a policy so central to America's survival as a free country as getting hold of loose nuclear materials and controlling nuclear proliferation requires the willingness of foreign countries to provide full, 100 percent co-operation. Making yourself into the world's most hated country is not an obvious way to secure that help." and concludes that " George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism."

The conservative Financial Times also endorsed Kerry, saying "Mr Bush's flaw is his stubborn reluctance to admit mistakes and to adjust personnel and policy."

There are many other endorsements and criticisms. For example, 48 Nobel Laureates Endorse John Kerry because "Unlike previous administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, the Bush administration has ignored unbiased scientific advice in the policy-making that is so important to our collective welfare." Again, this points out that Bush lacks adaptive capacity, and is uninterested in considering facts.

Nobel Economist George Akerlof has called the Bush administration "the worst ever".

Then there are the books:

An anonymous former CIA member's Imperial Hubris shows how Bush is losing the war on terror.

Nixon staffer John Dean's Worse than Watergate claims that the secrecy with which Bush and Dick Cheney govern is not merely a preferred system of management but an obsessive strategy meant to conceal a deeply troubling agenda of corporate favoritism and a dramatic growth in unchecked power for the executive branch that put at risk the lives of American citizens, civil liberties, and the Constitution.

Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty chronicles former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill 's dealing with the Bush administration. O'Neill finds a world out of kilter, in which the president is an uncurious puppet of larger forces. O'Neill asserts that Saddam Hussein was targeted for removal as soon as Bush took office.

Five-term presidential advisor Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies points out that Bush ignored the challenge of terrorism before 9/11, and is still not doing what is necessary to make America safe. Clarke is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on the subject and was the nation's crisis manager on 9/11.

Perhaps most important of all are the comments by military leaders:

Colin Powell says in a Newsweek article (11/1/04) that the insurgents are winning in Iraq.

says in a Newsweek article (11/1/04) that the insurgents are winning in Iraq. Former president George H. W. Bush wrote in his book A World Transformed that stopping the first Gulf War short of Baghdad was the right decision because ". We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically differentb and perhaps barrenb outcome."

wrote in his book that stopping the first Gulf War short of Baghdad was the right decision because ". We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically differentb and perhaps barrenb outcome." Former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki was forced into retirement when he called for "several hundred thousand" troops, contradicting Rumsfield's lowball number.

was forced into retirement when he called for "several hundred thousand" troops, contradicting Rumsfield's lowball number. Gen. Tony McPeak , Air Force chief of staff in the first Gulf War, calls Bush's term "a national disaster".

, Air Force chief of staff in the first Gulf War, calls Bush's term "a national disaster". Gen. Anthony Zinni said "the former commander of the U.S. Central Command. "Anyone could know the problems they were going to see. How could they not?".

said "the former commander of the U.S. Central Command. "Anyone could know the problems they were going to see. How could they not?". Former U.S. Administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer said that the Bush administration never had enough troops on the ground.

said that the Bush administration never had enough troops on the ground. A NY Times series of articles by Michael Gordon details many of the errors in planning and execution. One of the pieces points out that the Jan. 2003 report by the National Intelligence Council prepared a 38-page assessment of post-war Iraq and mentions the risk of an insurgency only in the last paragraph. This seems to be an indication of a systemic failure of imagination -- to me it goes right to the top.

Reporter Judd Legum, in The Nation lists 100 facts that point out major mistakes by the Bush administration.

lists 100 facts that point out major mistakes by the Bush administration. 60 Minutes (10/31/04) reported that the US forces in Iraq are improperly armored; "the humvees don't have armor because the DOD did not plan for a long war in Iraq."

The astounding thing is how well Bush's "reality-creating" approach has stood up to this criticism. With any president in my lifetime (with the possible exception of Reagan), any one of these thoughtful criticisms would be enough to cause serious questioning of the president's competency. But Bush seems to be skilled at deflecting the criticism by pretending it doesn't exist.

On the other side, the Republicans can point to Democrat Zell Miller as a Bush supporter. The Swift Boat Veterans claim Kerry is Unfit for Command, and they should have their say, but it now seems clear that they are not providing first-hand knowledge of Kerry.

Conclusion