THINKING THINGS OVER
The Badger Game
We shouldn't expect presidential candidates to have a plan for everything.
BY VERMONT ROYSTER
Monday, December 1, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
(Editor's note: This column appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 9, 1968.)
When Henry Ford picked Semon E. Knudsen as president of the Ford Motor Company, barely a week after Mr. Knudsen left General Motors, it's hardly likely that he asked for a prior précis on exactly how he would change the manufacturing, marketing, sales and administrative policies of the company.
If he had it's even less likely that Mr. Knudsen could have told him. Since Mr. Knudsen had spent his whole life working in the auto business he certainly has some general ideas about how an auto company ought to be run.
But it would be unrealistic to expect him to have a ready-made blueprint for the company. There are just too many things he can't know about until he's actually in the job.
Mr. Knudsen was tapped on the basis of his past performance, which suggested to Henry Ford that he was a man of some competence in his field, of good judgment, and with a philosophy about the business that was reasonably in tune with Mr. Ford's.
This method of picking top management is pretty well understood in business. As a matter of fact, it's pretty well understood by most of us when, in our private affairs, we have to choose someone to rely on, as a doctor or lawyer.
You don't ask a surgeon to tell you exactly what's he going to do before he operates, for the simple reason that an honest surgeon doesn't know until he's had a look. You just pick the man who give you the best sense of confidence by reason of training, experience and character--and then hope for the best.
But for some reason we go about it quite differently when we go to pick a political leader, especially a president. We expect the candidate to give us all the answers ahead of time.
Right now a number of would-be presidential candidates are running around the state of New Hampshire offering their services to the voters. And in addition to kissing babies, wearing funny hats, milking cows and smiling at everybody, they are badgered to say what they would do about the farm problem, labor unions, crime, poverty and the balance of payments. Not to mention Vietnam.
Especially indeed, Vietnam. It's not enough for him to be generally in favor of or disapproving of the agonizing war. Be he dovish or hawkish he's expected to lay down how he would fight the war better or, as the case may be, how he would get us out of it.
If he doesn't, he risks leaving a bad impression on the New Hampshire voters and will assuredly be jumped on by editorial writers from New York to California. Sometimes a politician is jumped on even if he isn't a candidate. The governor of New York's insistence that he isn't a candidate didn't save him from a whipping by the New York Times for not having a Vietnam policy.
The thought here, presumably, is that a man who is being considered for president, whether by himself or by friends, is duty bound to have answers and speak them out. If he doesn't, it means that he's either hiding his program to confuse the voters or is incapable of having an answer.
It's pretty ridiculous, really. The fact that we insist on it as a sort of political convention is responsible for the fact that so often presidents in office appear to abandon the speeches that got them elected--for which, of course, they are roundly whipped in the history books.
Woodrow Wilson ran on a peace program and promptly got us into war. Franklin Roosevelt ran on an economy program and promptly spent more than any president before him; he got elected the third time because he would never send American boys to fight on foreign fields and promptly sent millions of them to do battle there. Eisenhower promised economy and ran up a record peacetime deficit.
Possibly some of this was intellectual chicanery; politicians aren't any more honest than the rest of us. But a lot of it comes about for the simple reason that a presidential candidate cannot know for sure what he would do in a given circumstance; things just look different when he's the incumbent.
So maybe it would be better if people stopped badgering the candidates for all-wise advance solutions. It may be nice to hear promises that accord with your wishes, but do you really think any of the candidates--pick any one you like--can honestly say what he would do about the troubles that confront us, especially Vietnam? Do you?
This doesn't mean that the candidates should be excused from stating their philosophy on war and peace, extravagance and frugality, or on the other great issues of the day. Nor that we shouldn't judge them on the clarity with which they see the issues, on the indications as to which way they will lead us.
A man who believes in prudent fiscal policy may not give us that balanced budget he promises next year--perhaps he will fail entirely--but he will surely manage our affairs more prudently than a man who believes that cost should not be a very important factor.
On Vietnam it makes a great deal of difference whether a candidate is imbued with the spirit that we must conquer at all cost, in both treasure and blood, or is convinced that the presidential task is to get us out of that quagmire at the least cost. But the truth is that neither may know how--or whether--he can achieve that goal.
It's not a fatal weakness, either, for a man to change his mind on the how and the whether in a campaign's mid-stream. Surely no intelligent man need have quite the same view of the Vietnam situation this week as he had a week ago. The dovish have new complications in the way of extricating ourselves from the mess; certainly the hawkish must reassess the cost of what they may prefer to see done.
Moreover, much can change between now and next January. Hanoi may be more or less accommodating; our military position may be better or much worse. A year from now the measures that could be proposed to save the dollar may be outmoded; events in our cities may call for measures no one would dream of now proposing.
How refreshing it would be if a man came forward to confess, honestly, he didn't know how he would cut the budget, how he would get us out of the war or how he would restore safety to our streets; only that he would pledge all his experience, intelligence and energy to such ends.
He'd catch so many people unawares, some of them might even vote for him.
Mr. Royster, who died in 1996 at 82, was editor of The Wall Street Journal from 1958 to 1971. He wrote "Thinking Things Over" until 1986. Robert Bartley is away.
URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/rbartley/?id=110004365 |
