Good Judgment

The December 17th issue of Time had some interesting statistics on voters. When asked the “most important quality” for a candidate, Democrats picked “good judgment” 33% of the time, and Republicans picked it 21%. The other choices were caring about people, leadership, character, and experience.

Does it bother you that good judgment wasn’t the top choice for three-quarters of all voters?

Obviously experience doesn’t help if you have bad judgment. But a person with good judgment would consult with people who have experience. Clearly, judgment is more important than experience.

Character is important in exactly the same sense that good health is important. You need a minimum of both to be a suitable president. But the bar isn’t set that high for either health or character. You can have polio, or be a liar, or a philanderer, and it doesn’t seem to have much impact on job performance. All of the current candidates have enough character, and enough health, for the job.

Leadership and caring about people are touchy-feely concepts that have little correlation with presidential job performance. Obviously you don’t want a wimp or a sociopath in the office, but again, the bar is set low. All of the current candidates clear it with room to spare.

Clearly, good judgment should be the most important quality in a president. But how often do you hear someone say that a candidate “has good judgment”? How about never?

I was thinking about this because someone forwarded me a link to a web site that is trying to draft Michael Bloomberg for president. http://www.uniteformike.com/. You would think the strongest quality a successful business person has to offer is good judgment. In most cases, if you start with a little money, and end up with a lot, you have to make a lot of good decisions along the way. But the site promoting Bloomberg doesn’t mention his decision-making skills because everyone knows voters aren’t influenced by that sort of thing.

Does that worry you?

Comments

[Justin M]

Nice great post thanks alot!!!!

[Michael Adams]

I rather like Mr. Thompson, precisely because of his judgment. When the interviewer asks him a question, he puts his fingertips together, thinks a moment, and gives a very good, lawyerly response. If the moderator thinks that this might trigger a descent into "mine is better than yours is," I will not be offended if you strike the name and insert ellipses. Do you notice that the percentage of people who list judgment first is very close to the percentage of people with an IQ above one ten? Allow four percent for emotional responses, and you are exactly there. Hmmm.

[Johann]

Splunge!

[Hank]

Wait, _this_ Bloomberg?

"... this from Bloomberg yesterday, by "a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations," ... Certainly this is a classic:

The whole subprime problem can be seen as a consequence of too few prices and too many deals in the first place. The price of a standard fixed-rate mortgage is too high for many families, even at today's historically low rates. The appeal of the adjustable-rate loan, never mind that of the subprime no-doc mortgage, lay precisely in that it allowed borrowers to fool themselves about the true price of the debt they were assuming.

You can, apparently, be a senior fellow of something having to do with "economics" and not realize that "loan amount" is one of the variables in =PMT. I fault the educational system: too much economic history, too little Excel....
------end excerpt-------

[Hank]

Wrong comic, it's Doonesbury discussing God Judgment in politicians right now.

[stor perde]

perde
perde
mefru?att
perde
projeksiyon perdesi
motorlu perde
stor perde
tül perde
temizlik
temizlik şirketi
ofis temizliği
ev temizliği
şirket temizliği
jaluzi perde

[fddgdgfdd]

fdfdfdfdfdf ddgfdfddfd gfdfgfdgfdgdgfdgfd

[Noah Vaile]

What worries me is that anyone thinks that Bloomberg has good judgement and is a viable candidate for any elective office including the one he bought. New Yorkers, both city and state (City State?) have notoriously awful judgement and almost always elect at best poorly qualified candidates, at worst utterly corrupt slime that look well in suits, pantsuits included.
So if there are any questions about judgement one only needs to consider the current crop of New York politicos and one swiftly comes to the conclusion that they all epitomize bad judgement: both their own and that of New York State voters.

[Allen Anderson]

In determining who to vote for, I think most people consider all the factors in deciding. For example, what is we elected a president with good judgement, yet doesn't care about people. Obviously, I'd prefer a president whose actions are for my well being (even if he has terrible judgement), instead of a president who had good, yet sadistic judgement. Honestly, both would make terrible presidents. But I would probably vote for a president who has mediocre judgement, if his ideology was similar to mine.

[Joshua Jacobsen]

Well, Good Judgment sounds like a great quality, but at the risk of being contrary, let me suggest the following:

The best decision in the world -- a little too late -- is worth less than a mediocre decision made right on time.

That's not a "high quality" mindset, but I know that Scott Adams is a proponent of "good enough" and could appreciate the point.

Also... I believe that sticking to a plan -- even a mediocre one -- is better than starting over again and again with "better" plans. Bush has almost dissuaded me from that position, but I still kinda respect the ideology of making a decision and following through with it until it's done.

[Andrew MacRae]

For starters, I want to say that the two people below me are not "Andrew MacRae" as they claim to be. They may be andrew macraes, but I'm the blogger from http://www.UniteForMike.com

Anyway, what I wondering is how many of you actually vote? From the comments I'd think that alot of you are disenfranchised from the whole voting process. America is in an awful quagmire right now, it's called Washington D.C. and we really need to do something different before we collapse from within or are taken over by china. I'm not asking you to agree that Mike will solve every possible problem, what I am asking is that you at least stand up and recognize how awful the country is being managed under a two-party rule. Mike Bloomberg is a rallying point for people sick of politics as usual - I encourage you to meet us there.

[Peter Johnston]

What worries me more is that equally few could name the people in teams behind presidential candidates, never mind how they stand on key issues. Would anyone have voted for Bush if they knew they would get Rumsfeld?
Secondly no-one complains about their judgement but everyone complains about their memory...

[Avi]

This is the same as to when those who send a candidate only care if he wins and not is he good ?
He might be the best for the nation but he won't win. For we all know that the masses as ASSES.

[Mark]

A president doesn't have to have good judgment, because presidents (or prime ministers for that matter) rarely make the decision themselves. Usually the advisers and cabinet members make the technical decisions and the President just signs it. I mean, look at recent American presidents. Reagan didn't know much about anything (he was an actor), Clinton didn't exactly have an hands-on-experience in either health, transport, science, development.... you get the picture. Presidents often don't know much - they just sign, sign and sign. I would say that in the US or even in my country, Australia, the cabinet members and advisers have more real power than the President. Yet its the President who gets blamed for bad policy.

[Draft Michael Bloomberg]

People are ready for change. There is no better time than now for a third party candidate... especially one that can fund their own billion dollar campaign.

http://www.runmikerun.com/

.

[D. Mented]

I don't really like any candidate I've seen so far, and would like to add my "hear hear!" to the comments that people with sense no longer run for president.
I'd like to draft Lou Dobbs, with Will Smith for vice.
Dobbs because he's aware of the economic situation as it is today and doesn't think another war would fix things, and Smith because I like his acting roles better than I liked any of Reagan's (which seemed to be the reason people voted for him so...)(Smith as vice would get to run for president later claiming expirience)
D. Mented (and tired of being serious, as it doesn't seem to help)

[Assclown]

Saying "integrity" seems like just a form of personal puffery: "Look at me, I believe integrity is important, so you can trust ME. *I* don't cheat on my wife or do drugs or spill my seed on the barren plain, there's nothing sketchy about me... I SWEAR."

-Meanwhile, you don't mind if the president is a dimwit, a moron, out of touch with reality, or deluded into believing God has chosen HIM to hasten The Rapture.

...I'll take "good judgement" for $100, Alex

[John Elliot]

I think they're all vague nonsense. Good judgment could be taken to subsume all of the other characteristics, or not.

However I don't expect "good judgment" to be important to people, when they are participating in a popularity contest where someone that most of them know practically nothing about is selected as the head of the executive branch of a country with so much destructive potential based upon party affiliation and what they look like.

As to drafting businessmen for leadership positions I'll pass. Unless you invest in restaurants, after you have accumulated a certain amount of wealth, it's not surprising that it continues to grow. It's an expected outcome of a winner-takes-all feedback loop. If you feel the need to be ruled over by the firm hand of Michael Bloomberg I'm sure the two of you could work out some sort of relationship, though I don't think he swings that way.

[T-boy]

Being fairly inarticulate, I like to quote others. Here is a great quote that applies well to the election of a president or any representative. It gives a slightly different perspective from those of derek and wernman:

"Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities." - Dee Hocks

Which of our candidates has the highest integrity?

And I don't disqualify a candidate who has changed his mind over the years. As Muhammad Ali once said, "A man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life."

[GR Mark]

> We are obviously
> thrilled that you and your readers are interested in
> results-oriented government - instead of the same old
> pandering BS

Results-oriented government. God help us all.

Stalin got results. Mao got results.

I like divided government that yammers a lot and panders and then is mostly harmless. Except, of course, for the tremendous, earth-shattering expense that comes from not actually MEASURING results or actually caring what something costs.

Most of humanity currently lives under results-oriented government.
I prefer the panderers who burn money for the fun of it, and they throw better parties.

[adora]

This is why democracy isn't the best policy.

What people *say* they want and what they actually choose are very different. Most of us don't know why the hell we choose what we chose. The reasons are often made up to make it sound like we aren't that stupid. Eventually, we are most likely to vote on grounds of likability.

Studies have shown that most people prefer the item on the our right side even when it is presented along an identical item to the left. http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/12/what-we-dont-know-about-shopping.php
(Yes, moist robot program has a glitch...)

Well, it is still disturbing to know that most people don't even consider saying "Good Judgment" is the most important quality.

[RPK]

The problem here is that there is no one definition of 'good judgement'. It's sort of like pornography, we can't define it, but we know it when we see it. And what you might think of as good judgement would be considered terrible by someone else.

Republicans probably think that the Supreme Court showed good judgement in stopping the vote recount in Florida after the 2000 election. The state of Florida had no standards as to what contituted a vote, so how could you recount?

Democrats see this as horrible judgement. The court stopped the democratic process and 'gave' the election to GWB. So the same event can be seen as good or bad, depending on your viewpoint.

I think others have expressed a good idea, anyone who really wants to be President should be disqualified. Being President should be like jury duty. Something that no one wants to do, but it's our civic responsibility to serve once in a while.

[LJP]

They must have polled an unusually intelligent group of people to get that result. Either that, or the poll is faulty. It's a basic fact of statistics that only 16% of the population are brighter-than-average. Therefore, only about 16% of the respondents SHOULD have chosen "good judgment". So, the poll isn't what worries me. What worries me is that our next president will be elected by a majority consisting chiefly of dullards and underachievers!

[Stomper]

Eh, if you have enough experience, that can compensate for a lack of good judgment. You only have to exercise your judgment when (1) it is time to make a decision, and (2) your experience doesn't tell you which way to go. Obama will have to have extremely good judgment, because his experience is so limited.

History shows us that good business skills don't equal good political, military or diplomatic skills. They don't even equal good economic skills -- often because the business leader sees the economy through the highly distorted lens of his or her own business field.

Demonstrated good judgment in business does not equal good judgment in any other field. The kind of experience you get in business leaves you to make a lot of judgment calls when you venture into another field.

--Stomper

[Jeffrey Ellis]

Excellent point. And it's because in general, Americans themselves don't have particularly stellar judgment. If they did, the survey results would have come out to 80% or 90%.