|
||
What to Expect from an Intelligent President
Brace yourself. It's going get rocky soon. We are about to have a very bright man as our president. And we've been away from that territory for a very long time.
Barack Obama is what social scientists describe as "cognitively complex." He can accommodate within his views and values what others see as contradictions. He inhabits an abstract rather than concrete world. For the cognitively complex among us, the gray area is broad.
That's why he doesn't rush to a microphone to explain actions that generate controversy. He operates on this rule: "They won't remember you got it to them late so much as that you got it to them wrong."
He is more considered than cautious. If he were cautious, he wouldn't have invited Rick Warren to do the inauguration prayer. That decision likely came from a lengthy sorting out of the pros and cons. The same could be said of some of his cabinet appointments. He may have discredited experience during the election, but he has high regard for it now.
For a man intent on change, he relies heavily on the way he has made decisions for many years. He lines up the ducks. He looks past the obvious. He prioritizes. He contradicts in one sense in order to be consistent in another. That doesn't preclude change, it merely means the President-elect's avenue to it will not be newly paved.
He takes time to identify options likely to succeed in the long run or ones that serve his higher order goals. By necessity, therefore, some people are going to be disappointed early on in his presidency.
Even those people willing and able to entertain complexity on a host of issues are often unwilling and unable to do so regarding their passions. In other words, as Frank Rich has implied, Barack Obama may overestimate at times his ability to bridge differences, especially among people passionate about particular causes. They are likely to be very impatient if their issues are among the ones President Obama puts on the back burner.
As delighted as so many of us are to have Barack Obama's presidency right around the corner, we'll need to keep in mind the type of thinker he is. He may have begun his race for the presidency with the single concept of hope, but he will begin his presidency with considerably greater complexity. He may have captured us with his heart, but he will lead us largely with his mind.
We should brace ourselves for him to make decisions that seem at times contradictory to what he said during his campaign - not because he lied, but because he never got very specific. As the complex among us do, he left doors slightly open on major issues knowing he might need to slip through them to focus on more pressing ones.
We elected a complex man. If anyone expected he'd agree with any particular interest group on all issues, he or she wasn't paying attention. But if President-elect Obama thinks he can train all of us to think at his level, with openness and understanding, that we'll come around to his thinking even if he breaks our hearts, he may not have been paying attention either.
Only time will tell, but it's good to go into the New Year knowing our future president's preferred decision-making style. He grasps passion and has exuded it often, but he will be a thinking person's president. That is at once a terrain on which we'll stumble having not traversed it in some time and a welcome breath of fresh air.
Dr. Reardon also blogs at bardscove.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Intelligent, certainly. That is what makes his deafening silence on the US paid for slaughter in Gaza so much more damning. It'd be easier to take were he an ignorant ideologue like Bush.
He's fine about commenting on terror in Mumbai but cannot condemn Collective Punishment and the use of cluster bombs in Gaza?
Shame on you, my President-elect.
These are complex times so he'll have a lot to mull over. I don't always agree with his decisions, however we the people put him in charge because we have faith that he can solve some of the problems of these modern times. Folks we have to give him a chance, there's no quick fix for any of the problems. We do though, have to be a partner in this and whether we agree with him or not must help in the ways that we can.
How do we know he is smart? What has he done to make us assume so? A scientest is smart, a mathmetican a physist but he is just another lawyer that really has done nothing but teach. I was always told that those that can do and those that can't teach.
"How do we know he is smart? What has he done to make us assume so?"...you're joking right???.....if you REALLY need these questions answered....the answers probably don't matter to you....oh, and it's "scientist".....
You haven't been paying attention.
Google him and read about his education.
Can a "scientest" spell?
Bill Clinton was brilliant and a great President (before you go nuts check his final approval rating of 60%, the deficit, the economic numbers, the wars not started, etc which counts for something)...Clinton scared the heck out of the (extreme) Republicans and the plain/palin folk and some libs. Obama is smart and pragmatic and un-horny enough to lead without threatening the plain folk so much.
I won't go into trying to figure out the last smart Republican President.....ok, Nixon, right? And before that IKE? I'll look into this.
Dr. Reardon, your analysis of PE Obama's intellectuality comes as close to anyone who has tried to do so. After 8 years of having a "non-thinker" as president, it is very refreshing and critical that we have someone who is a "deep thinker" in the White House. All one has to do is to read Obama's book, "Dreams of my Father" to get a semblance of how deep a thinker that this guy is.
A Self proclaimed 'decider' does not a good President make.
Obama is undoubtedly "very bright" but we still don't know whose side he's on. The Clintons are also very bright and also provided temporary superficial relief from the mindlessness of their predecessors, but the hope they inspired turned to ashes.
Bill Clinton also had to deal with a GOP Congress for 3/4 of his presidency. That diluted his ability to follow his bliss. Well, his other bliss.
Take everything that George Bush is (and is not), turn it around 180 degrees, and you've got Obama!
All this analysis of Obama is meaningless until Obama has been president and has some decisions to make. All speculation, all meaningless.
You are correct. I posted contrary to the writer yesterday stating that OBAMA does not have the right economic team, AT ALL. It is now Sunday night and the headline on this site reads OBAMA recommends 300billion tax cut.
This is absolutely the WRONG ANSWER to start fixing our economic problems. Remember too, that OBAMA also went to push the bankers bailouts?
So far I am not impressed. Mr. Obama may be smart, but it seems that smart people in the USA still do many studpid things.
Complex and intelligent are great. But it's going to take persuasion, leadership, willingness to spend political capital and even offending folks on the other side of the aisle if we think we're going to get much different than we had under Bush. Will it take intelligence and an appreciation of complexity to get that done? Sure. But I won't be impressed until I start seeing it happen. And all I've seen so far is a melting toward the mean. On top of that, the Congressional Dems are pretty much wandering aimlessly as usual.
Thanks for that interesting perspective. That cognitive complexity is precisely why a lot of conservatives chose Obama over his opponent in the election and are still cautiously but publically voicing support even if they are quick to criticize many of his selections. I typically vote for democrats and even I am disheartened to see so many of the same old faces being selected but I have to admit that Obama may very well be able to make those selections work as a team on complex solutions with a practical result. Fingers crossed.
Some of us Libertarians voted for him for his brain too. I hope he uses it.
I'm flummoxed by all of the surprise re Obama's complexity.
This is exactly why I voted for him. I WANT a person who can handle cognitive dissonance and think things through to their logical conclusion without getting lulled into a false sense of surety due to his enormous ego and limited intellect.
I think we're ready for complexity -- and I think most of us get that things aren't black and white and they most certainly are not about our pet issues. We've seen enough blood shed worldwide to understand what's at stake here.
Bring on the sanity, the well-reasoned choices, and the deliberate and deliberated progress.
OBAMA - 2012
Obama has a plan and a vision to where he wants to take this country. However, the people are so accustomed to talking points and gimmick that they may not have the patience for the Obama type. I could remember that everybody wanted to ran his campaign because they thought they knew more than he does. Everybody didn't understand that Obama was not a person who dwelt in insults and meanness, and perceive of being soft. So, we all have a lot to learn about Obama and his style of governing. So, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
We can make it a better ride if we have faith that Obama knows what he is doing. He certainly has access to more information than we do. I'm willing to give up the reins to him for a while, and enjoy the ride.
Hopefully, we will have many Presidents of the United States of America and other elected officials in the future who read a lot. I hope they will read the United States Constitution especially Article 1, Section 8 and the Bill of Rights, The Federalist Papers, John Locke, Machiavelli's Discourses, and The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Hopefully, voters will as well and think about what kind of Republic they want their children and grandchildren to live in.
Hopefully, they will be willing to admit when they are wrong at least to themselves and adopt better positions.
I graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1992 with a BA Degree in Political Science and a minor in Economics.
I ran for United States Senate from New Hampshire in 2002.
My website is http://www.myspace.com/kennethstremsky
Sincerely,
Ken Stremsky
David Keirsey's website says Obama has an INTJ personality profile, which has many of the similarities listed above.
Loved Frank Rich's articles about McCain. Rich called Obama arrogant with a big ego.
http://typelogic.com/intj.html
"To outsiders, INTJs may appear to project an aura of "definiteness", of self-confidence. This self-confidence, sometimes mistaken for simple arrogance by the less decisive, is actually of a very specific rather than a general nature; its source lies in the specialized knowledge systems that most INTJs start building at an early age. When it comes to their own areas of expertise -- and INTJs can have several -- they will be able to tell you almost immediately whether or not they can help you, and if so, how. INTJs know what they know, and perhaps still more importantly, they know what they don't know."
INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type: INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "Does it work?" to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake.
INTJs are known as the "Systems Builders" of the types, perhaps in part because they possess the unusual trait combination of imagination and reliability."
I do not remember what to expect froman intelligent president. We have had the ideologue-in-chief far too long.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
