White House Run Takes Different Skills Than Running the Nation
By Indira Lakshmanan and Edwin Chen
Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- For a year, would-be U.S. presidents have pressed the flesh at state fairs, fielded questions in debates about what Jesus would do and whether they are sufficiently ``black'' or ``feminine,'' attacked their rivals in sound bites and defended themselves in costly ads.
Over the next six days, the heavily wooed voters of Iowa and New Hampshire will reward some, and not others. Yet the qualities that win the charm offensive and mud- slinging of a campaign often have little to do with the skills required to govern, say former presidential advisers and historians.
``The ability to do sound bites, to be able to attack your opponent, to appeal to your party base'' is crucial in a campaign, said Leon Panetta, who served as White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton.
Once in the Oval Office, a president must ``unify the country behind your vision and be able to work within the institutions of our democracy to get things done,'' Panetta said.
The campaign rewards the ``ability to raise money, name identification, and skill and discipline in transmitting a message that will attract large numbers of voters,'' said historian Michael Beschloss, author of nine books on the presidency.
`Performance Under Pressure'
What a campaign rarely does is reveal ``their judgment and tenacity, their understanding of other political actors, their core values and their performance under pressure,'' he said.
In 1860, Republican delegates knew Abraham Lincoln had the leadership skills to face the danger of the South leaving the Union, Beschloss said. ``I'm not sure those qualities would have been recognized under the process we have today,'' he said.
A candidate today needs to win voters' hearts, and personal style often trumps substance. A president, by contrast, needs viable policies more than one-liners and a good haircut. As former New York Governor Mario Cuomo put it: ``You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.''
In this race, candidates are courting the hard core in their parties with big talk on social issues, taxes, immigration and foreign affairs. With a few exceptions, such rhetoric reflects more the passions of the moment than a blueprint for practical governance.
`No Chance'
Outsider candidates often make promises ``that have no chance of being enacted,'' such as Republican former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's proposal to eliminate income tax, said Lawrence Jacobs, a presidential scholar at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. ``The public have their hopes elevated into the stratosphere,'' Jacobs said.
And campaign slogans often have little to do with governance. Delaware Senator Joseph Biden recently alluded to the disconnect between what is said on the trail and what is done in the White House by referring to the competing campaign pitches of the two front-runners for the Democratic nomination, Senators Hillary Clinton of New York, 60, and Barack Obama of Illinois, 46.
``When this campaign is over, political slogans like `experience' and `change' will mean absolutely nothing,'' Biden, 65, who is also a Democratic candidate, said in an ad. ``The next president has to act.''
To be sure, certain aspects of the popularity contest can be preparation for the workaday demands of the White House. The endurance test of traversing the country and beating back attacks weeds out most who can't handle the crushing burden of presidential crises.
Kennedy
Likewise, meeting voters is about more than getting votes. Campaigning in West Virginia, John F. Kennedy went down a mine shaft and ``was absolutely flabbergasted by the plight of the miners. His first executive order addressed miners' health and safety, something he would've never known about if he didn't have to campaign,'' said Lou Cannon, a presidential biographer.
Above all, the charisma and communication skills that win votes also helped presidents such as ``Kennedy, Reagan and Clinton get things done that you can't if you're Jimmy Carter,'' said Cannon, co-author of the forthcoming book ``Reagan's Disciple: George W. Bush's Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy.''
At the same time, campaigns offer voters glimpses, if furtive ones, into the personality underneath a candidate's façade. When George H.W. Bush glanced at his watch and Al Gore sighed during debates, the men came across as impatient and arrogant.
Coalition-Building
The transition from successful candidate to successful president is never an easy one. Campaigns are about sharpening differences with rivals, while governing is about building coalitions.
High on victory, newly elected presidents are often ``both arrogant and ignorant'' and they are given just ``10 weeks to choose a government,'' said Stephen Hess, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington who has been involved in every presidential transition since 1960.
A president needs to understand how the bureaucracy works. ``It's a government of several million employees and all kinds of complexities, so management competence is not trivial,'' said Fred I. Greenstein, an emeritus presidential scholar at Princeton University in New Jersey.
The trail lends itself to a glad-handing extrovert with catchy slogans, while the Oval Office needs a leader who can focus, organize, set priorities and listen.
`Flat-Footed'
To be fair, there's no real preparation for the kinds of decisions one has to make as president. President George W. Bush ``didn't know a 9/11 was coming'' and Ronald Reagan was ``caught flat-footed by the recession of 1981-82,'' Cannon said.
Qualities that Americans demand in their leader -- lofty vision and decisiveness, for example -- can conflict with equally necessary traits, such as pragmatism and flexibility.
``The capacity to inspire'' and convey ``optimism, a sense of destiny, empathy and courage are not necessarily the kinds of traits that lend themselves to organizational flow charts and consensus-building,'' said David Eisenhower, director of the Institute of Public Service at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
As for advisers, Kennedy and Reagan were famous for listening to a variety of views; the current President Bush is known for limiting his circle to loyalists. Whom Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, or the other candidates would choose is largely unknown.
So what qualities should voters look for?
``Empathy, good judgment, someone who picks smart advisers, who knows about the world,'' said Eisenhower, whose grandfather was President Dwight D. Eisenhower and father-in-law was President Richard Nixon.
Last Updated: January 2, 2008 00:02 EST
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