WHO AMONG PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES WOULD MAKE A GOOD PRESIDENT – A READER’S QUESTION CONSIDERED

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© 2007

"It is not enough to have great qualities, we must also have the management of them."

Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French Seventeenth Century Moralist

A reader of my piece, "THINKING ABOUT LEADERSHIP," asked the question whom among the presidential candidates do you think would make a good president?

In my book WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990), I claimed we were a one-dimensional society with an aversion to greatness, which was best demonstrated in our leadership. I see no reason to change that assessment now.

This aversion is first demonstrated in our educational system. I have a grandson who is going to an exclusive prep school in which it sets his parents back about $17,000 a year, and he is just finishing the seventh grade.

From what I've seen during "Grandparents Day" it isn't the equivalent of what I got at St. Patrick's Grammar School in Clinton, Iowa decades ago for nothing. I examined the workbooks, the lesson plans, the posted materials on the board, and witnessed the exercises presented to us, and I was under whelmed in all instances.

Education today is geared to impress. It is geared to tests, not to learning, to high SAT scores and not to conceptual understanding, to high GPAs whether than insight into the material covered and the world beyond where everyday experience complements the classroom.

Curiosity in school isn't pricked, but appetites and status are. Children go to school “because they have to” not “because they want to.” They take education as a right, which they can accept or reject, and not the privilege that it is, and therefore not appreciated, as it should be. Politicians demonstrate every day precisely this characteristic of our society. They not only fail to speak with clarity but with little sense of learning.

The best and the brightest are not the equivalent of decades ago even though they have wondrous electronic facilities and consummate skills at manipulating these electronic wonders. Thinking is not a text message.

Technology is not education. It is a tool too often used as a toy. Consequently, the equivalent of comprehension is not necessarily a subset of problem solving skills. That is why we keep repeating the same problems as if discovering them for the first time.

Education should not be boring but stimulating, yet it is both boring and iterative, which would appear to commence with a hard wiring process that results in cheating.

A one-dimensional society is a cheating society, and the greatest sufferers for the cheating are the cheaters. Kids will do anything to have high SAT scores and impressive GPAs. Cheating has become a cultural dimension of our society in its one-dimensional inclination. When artificial indexes, such as IQ and SAT scores, are taken to be the measure of intelligence then man is truly mismeasured to the extreme.

The other night on a TV program a father saw the SAT envelop of his daughter empty, and assumed her scores were low, immediately going to her head of school to see if she could take a review course to bump up her scores. Actually, the daughter had impressive scores but had taken it out of the envelope to show her mother. The idea that a parent would do anything to bump up an artificial index of his child speaks to one-dimensionalism.

NUMBER ONE

SO THE FIRST QUALITY OF A GOOD PRESIDENT WOULD BE HONESTY AND INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY AS A LEARNER AND NOT A KNOWER, AS A LISTENER AND NOT A TELLER, AS A THINKER AND NOT AN IMPRESSOR.

Leadership is not an egalitarian pursuit, but a quest to develop one's house of intellect to become a mansion of many rooms, rooms that are amply furnished with diverse and varied cultural artifacts.

To be able to converse with and understand everyman a leader must first converse with and understand him or herself. This takes the combination of a quest for “knowledge building” leavened by incrementally sound supportive and corroborating experience. School is never out for a leader and often he or she doesn't get passing grades, but accepts the occasional shortfall as the price for leadership.

NUMBER TWO

SO THE SECOND THING IS THAT A PRESIDENT HAS TO GET BEYOND OUR VOCATIONALLY ORIENTED MATRICULATION. THIS IS AS EVIDENT IN THE IVY LEAGUE AS IT IS IN THE MOST MODEST OF CITADELS OF LEARNING. THE CONSEQUENCE OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING IS VOCATIONAL THINKING AND LEADERSHIP. THIS TRANSLATES INTO SHORT TERM UTILITY THINKING INSTEAD OF LONG TERM TERMINAL ASSESSMENT.

Leadership is impossible if the culture is organized against leadership and our society is so organized.

We are systemically committed to and depended on wealth creation. Progress is our most important product and no one seems to questions the insanity of this quest, especially with the reality of diminishing resources, disappearing specimens of wildlife, and all the consequences of an increasingly overcrowded planet.

We think of value in terms of wealth rather than the wealth of values. There is little room for trust, sacrifice, love, compassion, virtue, and kindness when they are all subsumed under competitive advantage.

In a one-dimensional society, the people most likely to rise to leadership positions may have little talent or aptitude for leadership other than wealth creation. They can be glib but glibness requires no depth, and leadership does. They can be physically attractive but leadership is not identified with surface beauty but inner quality. They may have great physical courage but leadership is more a function of moral courage, which is not the same as physical courage.

In this one-dimensional orientation, the person or persons who are most successful at raising money are the most likely to win elected office, which includes the presidency.

This is because in a wealth creation society the king and queen of worth are media in all its forms bombarding the senses until one is senseless, and finally capitulates to the poll posters and votes what is believed to be his or her conscience when all it is is their respective fatigue.

NUMBER THREE

SO THE THIRD THING IS FOR A PRESIDENT TO EMERGE ABOVE AND BEYOND THE POPULAR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE AND TO DEMONSTRATE THE VISION TO SEE AND CAPACITY TO SERVE THE INTERESTS OF ALL, NOT SIMPLY IN THE NARROW CONTEXT OF NATIONAL INTERESTS BUT IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL REALITY.

Preparation for this role of leadership is not likely to be found in one of the more prestigious business schools, nor is it likely to be found in law, engineering or science, but in a person that has the foundation of a liberal and therefore liberating education.

This person would be fluent in the culture and language of his or her own culture and language as well as that of at least two other prominent cultures and languages of the international world with an affinity to grow in that comprehension and beyond. If this suggests a “liberal scholar,” it would be in the lower case.

Business schools are consumed with wealth creation; law with order; engineering with conformity; and science with value free analysis.

To a considerable degree, these are all one dimensional disciplines and orientations. Liberal arts leadership has enough acquaintance with these disciplines to see that they are integrated into multidimensional service.

NUMBER FOUR

THE FOURTH QUALITY A PRESIDENT SHOULD DEMONSTRATE IS THAT OF THE READER, A STUDENT OF HISTORY AND SCIENCE, MYTH AND RELIGION, AND GREAT MOMENTS OF GREAT MEN.

I provided a shortlist in WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS that would aid in the development of a multidimensional international perspective:

(1) Homer's THE ILIAD, THE ODYSSESY
(2) THE BIBLE
(3) THE TROJAN WARS
(4) THE TORAH
(5) THE KORAN
(6) Aristophanes THE BIRDS
(7) Euripides CYCLOPS
(8) THE BHAGAVAD GITA
(9) Sophocles OEDIPUS REX
(10) THE HOLY CRUSADES
(11) ALEXANDER THE GREAT
(12) Julius Caesar THE GALLIC WARS
(13) St. Paul THE EPISTLES
(14) Marcus Aurelius MEDITATIONS
(15) Edward Gibbons THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

But perhaps the most evasive characteristic of leadership whose absence has plagued American society throughout its history is the lack of a secure moral center and moral compass of that leader to guide and direct the leader through the inevitable chaos that accompanies a leader’s time.

Sycophants and sybarites can sense this lack and provide the leadership with flattery and debauchery. They are essentially invisible for when history writes of the debacles of leaders it seldom finds cause to mention them. Yet it was their presence and manipulation of that leadership that forced the fiascos or disasters that became manifested.

NUMBER FIVE

SO, IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS THE PRESIDENT MUST HAVE A STRONG INTUITIVE SENSE THAT CUTS THROUGH THE NONSENSE OF ADVISERS AND SELF INTERESTS TO STEER THE PROPER COURSE FOR THE GREATER GOOD. HE OR SHE MUST HAVE A DECISIVE MIND AND LITTLE PATIENCE WITH PROCRASTINATORS OR PROCRASTINATION.

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