Stupidity Plus Luck Equals Leadership

If all the experts tell you to go right, and you decide to go left, you’re probably stupid. But if you get lucky, and discover a pot of gold along the stupid path, people will call you a leader. You’ll still be stupid, but fewer people will feel the need to point that out.

When you’re in charge, there’s not much payoff in doing what the experts advise. The best you can achieve by taking the experts’ advice is the label “competent.”  It’s the faintest of praise. “Joe is competent.” It sounds like just ba-a-a-arely better than incompetent.

Interestingly, life is too complex to know for sure if turning right or turning left will work out best. Even the experts often get it wrong. That guarantees a fair number of stupid people will be judged great leaders. They’ll take the wrong turn and things will turn out right.

President Reagan was either a brilliant visionary who won the Cold War, or a walking cabbage that happened to be in office when the Soviet Union crumbled on its own. Pick one.

The elder and original President Bush followed expert advice more often than not. History will view him as a competent President. President Clinton was about the same – competent.

His son, President Bush, is bucking the experts on almost everything. There is a nonzero chance that global warming turns out to be no big deal, and Iraq turns into a functioning democracy. The odds are tiny, say the experts, but life is inherently unpredictable.

President Bush is stupid by definition, since he ignores experts in many fields.  But we won’t know for 50 years whether he’s a great leader.

Comments

[Hannah]

Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because it's all predetermined, right? No free will. :)

[jerry w]

A lie repeated often enough will almost be believed.

The one I'm thinking of is that "W" had better college grades than Al Gore.

Bullshit is too soft a term for that one, although I will concede that whoever was paid to take the exams for shitforbrains might have received those better grades.

The give away to the teaching staff should have been when whoever took the exams spelled "Bush" correctly.

I'm just saying.......

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

[Ben]

Leadership requires vision and persuasiveness.
Good leadership requires wisdom.

Churchill is an interesting study. Starts out with the first 2/3 in spades and rebounds and learns well enough from his many bad mistakes to get the 3rd which he ultimately uses to literally save his country.

Book recommendation for the curious:
http://www.amazon.com/Churchill-Young-Man-Hurry-1874-1915/dp/0671253042

As for Bush Jr., he may have internalized the neo-con vision, but it feels more like he adopted it by association with people than by beliefs or thoughts of his own. He managed to get elected, but not really on any issue so much as a persona.

So, 0/2 and wisdom brings it home at a resounding 0/3. Sad.

[Adrian D.]

Bobh:

There are indeed other reasons for disagreeing with experts. Stupidity is simply the most common reason. Based on the results, I don't believe Bush had useful information that the experts lacked.

Today's world is one of increased specialization. It is not stupid to recognize that a particular problem is outside one's expertise. It is stupid to adopt a "my way or the highway" attitude and to disregard all evidence one doesn't like.

[RPK]

So not listening to experts defines you as stupid?

Experts once thought that the world was flat, leeches were state-of-the-art medicine, and people could be guilty of witchcraft and burned.

A smart person takes the opinions of experts, (and hopefully gets some differing opinions), and makes his own judgement based on those opinions as well as his own knowledge and research.

But even that does not guarantee being a good leader. That requires decisiveness and toughness along with good judgement.

GWB is certainly decisive, but the good judgement aspect is lacking.

By contrast, look at Jimmy Carter. Probably the most intelligent President in modern times. Also one of the worst.

[JohnBoy]

Appearently, "experts" are only those learned scholars who agree with my opinion and ideology. Those that disagree are merely wrong, and should be ignored or ridiculed. Much the same as "If one party suggests/supports something, then the other is obligated to oppose it ... or at least complain that it wasn't done sooner, better, or enough"

[Real Live Girl]

Even though he is stupid, I think the fact that he and his administration got most of the nation and media to not call bullshit on all the lies and propaganda that put and kept our military in Iraq -- when we clearly should never have gone based on evidence, expert opinions, and world consensus -- means he is a great leader.

I think what's up for debate is whether he's reviled for it or not - now and 50 years from now. The only consolation I have personally is that I never voted for that idiot.

[Massif]

Cabbage, naturally.

Plus you need a competent president, anything else is probably going to cause more problems than it's worth. Brilliant people tend to be brilliant at some things, and just as bad at others, but people won't call them when they're wrong. Which means they can royally screw up because everyone thought it was probably some brilliance they didn't understand.

Competent people do just fine all the time. Which is what you really need when it comes to running a country.

[Jon]

I am trying to sort out Truman and Eisenhower: Competent or Brilliant?

[Chris]

Mao said: "It is too early to tell if the French revolution was a sucess"
Ok - so he killed millions but he had some nifty one liners

[Rohit]

Bush is an idiot by any standards of measurement except, perhaps, his own. He has made enough errors to fill up a bloody dictionary. The thing is, though, that once the immediate anger against him fades there will be two sides, just as now, who will say that he might have been wrong, but deserves points for courage. And nobody would be able to argue back properly because history fades. And there would be enough propaganda machines at work to produce enough books and materials to convince the public of his awesome powers of leadership.

That, unfortunately, is the sad truth. However, despite whatever damage control is going to be done, he will never be known as a leader. He could, with great effort by others, be known to posterity as a barely competent president. And that in itself is a legacy that he doesnt deserve.

[bobh]

"If all the experts tell you to go right, and you decide to go left, you’re probably stupid."
That's a terrible assumption.
If you trust 'experts', then you're really stupid. How about using critical thinking to make your own decisions?
Without critical thinking, and not 'doing what experts say' you're just a Scientologist or some other cult personality 'I've allowed the Expert to do my thinking for me so I can be inwardly peaceful.' (Is this some kind of a Dogbert trick?)

[jerry w]

"W" isn't really stupid, but with a lot of work from a trainer he could work up to that.

The really sad part is that as much as he's a bumbling fool who can't complete a simple sentence, he's going to walk away (assuming no tar and feather ending) with billions of dollars from his Saudi butt buddies, who owe and own him.

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

[me]

Very curious about sth. I guess Bush is too busy anyway, but isn´t saying "Bush is stupid" and then signing with your name dangerous? Couldn´t you end up in jail or sth?

[kenichi sugimoto]

an interesting point. very interesting.

[Rod]

Walking cabbage. It just sounds funnier.

[Rod]

Walking cabbage. It just sounds funnier.

[Zzyzxmo]

California started going downhill when Reagan was the governor. The US started going downhill when he got elected president. Reagans era started the middle class squeeze. I guess they didn't get enough of Reagan so they elected his chimp "w" president.

[Paul]

How nice it must be that none of the choices that you personally face are not of the magnitude of what any President must face. You get to sit there, isolated and smug, and postulate notions on the brilliance or idiocy of others, nibbling on your rabbit food shouting "OH HO!!! My lack of action and fleeing from risky decisions verifies my genius!!"

And the main reason you do it is because you enjoy stirring up the passions of the readers. Watch them froth and foam; such a delightful diversion from the dirty real world, full of real problems you get to avoid.

[Ajay Pal Singh Atwal]

Uh..oh... so Scott is right this time or is it just a wild left turn. But interesting anyway.

[Jeff Meyerson]

Votes:

1. "walking cabbage"
2. We don't need 50 years to know: he's a total moron.
3. there is no #3

[Zorro]

I'm sorry but that wouldn't make him a great leader, merely a stupid but lucky person. No-one in the fuuture history of the planet is ever going to make the mistake of thinking George W was anything but /stupid/...

[Noah Vaile]

This post actually makes sense despite some errors of reality. The basic premise, that we can't know the results of actions for many years down the road is of course quite correct. That even then there will be differences of opinion on who did what to cause this or that will always be with us. I tend to agree that forming a functioning republic in Iraq may be nigh on impossible. Bush may be stupid but he must have taken somebody's advice to get to be president. I disagree that Bush senior and Clinton will be seen as leaning towards the competent side any time soon, except perhaps in the eyes of their sycophants.

But as for "global warming"? What a total crock that is! Some places are indeed warming. Others are cooling. There have been periods, epochs even, of far greater planetary warming in the past, both prior to the dawn of man and since man has been here and semi civilzed. Climate change has always been an important aspect of having a climate in the first place. Pretty much if you have anything, even a rock, it will change if you give it enough time. The climate is an incredibly dynamic example of such a thing- we can't create a computer model thyat can predict anything beyond local weather no more than ten days out, and even then it ain't perfect. The planet's climate is, at this point in time, with both limited data and limited ability to manipulate the data we just can't do it. All that can be manipulated is public opinion. And boy is that ever focussed in on and manipulated to a fare thee well.
Don't forget that in the 1970s it was global cooling and the coming ice age that was predicted. Now it is warming. Both b.s. Sorry to see you falling into that blackhole of propaganda.

[Iain]

Call it leadership or call it stupidity plus luck, just don't step in it!

[Cyrus]

I wonder if vegas will ever have odds on that?

Cyrus
http://blog.uible.com