CEOs and Generals make poor politicians. They are used to giving orders and having them carried out by obedient minions. Success and failure are events, not processes, and they are easy to measure. The law is an annoying constraint to be circumvented or ignored wherever possible. Getting it done and winning the battle give a single-minded focus to tactics. The financial bottom line or the victory represent simple and easy to understand measure of success.
Give me a professional politician for President. And preferably make him a lawyer – for all our contempt for lawyers, they are at least trained in respect for the law. Even the lawyer Richard Nixon with all his flaws had a respect for the law that led him to his ultimate fate. In contrast, George W. Bush was a (failed) CEO and neither he nor his advisors had respect for the law. It is ironic that it was John Ashcroft as Attorney General from his hospital bed who was the most visible resistor to Bush’s and Rove’s hubris.
The art of politics is the art of negotiation, of compromise, of deal-making, of balancing and trading off competing good goals; like sausage-making, not pretty to watch and very frustrating to the ideologues, executives and generals. Leadership is to be found in those who understand history and macro-economics; who have a respect for the law as it is, not as they wish it were, and who have the well-being of the whole nation, not just their donors, at the root of their motivations.
So coming up in 2012, don’t show me business executives and turn-around artists; don’t show me unelectable pundits with strong and unyielding opinions based on selective factoids. Show me professional politicians and lawyers motivated by the public interest.