The Presidential Election Paradox

What We Want Versus What We Get

Raising money. Entertaining voters. Telling stories. Traveling a lot. Getting and giving endorsements (whatever those really are). Not screwing up too much. Candidates who are good at these things tend to win elections.

No sane, healthy person would ever want to run for President. It’s grueling. It’s compromising. It’s largely thankless, especially if you don’t win. You have to balance your time between asking for money and selling yourself and sometimes your ideas. At least half of the population won’t vote for you, even if you win.

Unfortunately, most of these things have little or nothing to do with governing, especially as President. Being President is about negotiating and finding compromise. It’s about managing, hiring, governing. It’s about making difficult decisions.

A friend of mine who was then CEO of a large public company once told me:

“…if the decisions are easy, they don’t make it to my desk. I only get to choose between bad and worse — and even then it’s tough to tell which is which…”

I can only imagine what that would be like when roughly half of the press and half of the population will almost inevitably criticize you after you choose “bad” instead of “worse”.

If we get lucky, we’ll get a President who has true empathy for his or her customers (us). The ability to relate to the voting public seems to be one trait that is shared between campaigning and governing.

If we want to elect better leaders, especially Presidents, who are great at governing, we need to find ways to make the job of getting elected more like the job of running the country.

Here are a few of my thoughts about where to start:

1. Public funding of campaigns, starting in general elections. It’s not that much money. It wouldn’t be hard to do logistically. Public funding for primaries is more complicated (though a good goal). A candidate’s ability to raise money has little to do with their ability to govern effectively. I would argue that it might even be inversely proportional when you consider the corrupting effect that asking for money can have on a person
2. Put an independent body (maybe League of Women’s Voters again?) in charge of hosting conversations between the candidates and the public on the national stage (debates and other events). Let 3rd parties into the conversation. Gladiator-style debates like we have now don’t accomplish anything. Why do we even ask “who won the debate?” Long-form, issue driven conversations should be the norm, not exception. Host them without commercials. Ratings shouldn’t be an important metric

What are your thoughts?