A better way to evaluate candidates - Providence Journal

Lee Drutman: A better way to evaluate candidates


WRITING BACK IN 1962, historian Daniel J. Boorstin mused on the ridiculousness of the famous 1960 Kennedy-Nixon TV debates: “A man’s ability, while standing under klieg lights, without notes, to answer in two and a half minutes a question kept secret until that moment, had only the most dubious relevance — if any at all — to his real qualifications to make deliberative presidential decisions on long-standing public questions after being instructed by a corps of advisers.”

It’s amazing how little has changed. For those who have been paying attention to the presidential-primary season, it has been debate after silly debate. The candidates line up under the lights. They try hard to smile, to look relaxed and happy (but presidential). Then Tim Russert (or some other establishment journalist) provides his unhelpful barrage of gotcha-style questions, to which the candidates typically respond with some well-rehearsed talking point that has nothing to do with the original question (“I’m glad you asked, Tim, because I’m in favor of helping make life better for everybody”). Occasionally, they will attack each other’s positions, but this always feels a bit like poking at Jell-O. In the end, everybody races to claim victory, as if such a thing could or should be claimed based on the preceding farce.

What a stupid way to evaluate a presidential candidate. There is nothing in the presidential job description that is at all like the glib pop quizzes of the debates. Being a good president requires the ability to be deliberative, to be thoughtful, to be able to respond to a complicated world that doesn’t conform to the canned nostrums of campaign-speak. It also requires the ability to work with Congress and to navigate the complexities of Washington. If only there were some way to improve this selection process.

How about, just for once, instead of a short-answer debate, we let our candidates take a long-essay test where we get to see the quality of their actual decision-making? The format could work like this: The candidates show up, and they each get an office with a computer, hooked up to the Internet, and a phone. They also get a full scenario. For example, What would they do if radical Islamists staged a coup in Pakistan and began initiating military action in Kashmir? How would they respond if China’s economy went into a tailspin and Asia began following? How would they respond if a particularly virulent flu started showing up in the United States? What would they do if a group claiming to be affiliated with al-Qaida blew up a bus in Chicago?

Then they get an hour to craft a response. They can call whomever they like, do what research they like, and talk to the scenario experts as much as they like. But every move is recorded on video, so we can see how they approach a problem. At the end, they each get 10 minutes in their office to explain how and why they would respond (this way they do not get to hear what other candidates have said).

This would be different. But it would be serious. It would give onlookers a chance to see how the candidates think through a situation, what questions they ask, and how they present a solution, given time to think about it. After all, we want a creative problem-solver in the Oval Office, not a mere regurgitator of rehearsed pabulum.

A second recommendation: Being an effective president also requires being able to work with people in Washington. A president can get very little done without the support of Congress and the executive-branch bureaucracy (witness Jimmy Carter). So why not send out an anonymous survey to all members of Congress and their staffs, plus the top-level career bureaucrats in the executive branch, and ask them what they think of the candidates and how they would feel about working with them? Voters could disregard this information if they like, but if I were choosing a candidate for a job, I’d sure want to know what people who have worked with and will work with that person honestly think.

Choosing the president of the United States is a serious thing. It’s a shame the process that we have emphasizes the trivial — the charades and parades that have no apparent correlation with the ability to lead the executive branch of a naturally fractious government of a nation of 300 million people. Surely, we can do better.


Lee Drutman, a frequent contributor, is the co-author of The People’s Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy.