Saturday, June 6, 2009
Ideal Qualities for a Presidential Candidate
Look at the ideal attributes that candidates might have on pp.31-2. Consider President Obama. On which two do you think he was relatively strongest and on which two do you think he was relatively weakest as a candidate. Explain and defend your conclusions.
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I think that President Obama was strongest on itelligence and personality/character. Obama is a well-educated "student of the Constitution"; with a JD from Harvard. He also has a personality that appeals to many people... I think most people would have rather had a beer with him than John McCain. I think he was weak in the fact that people generally lean toward someone who is more moderate... and although he may not be the most liberal... he certainly isn't "middle of the road". Also, even though people don't think about it as much since the post-Cold War era I believe his lack of foreign policy experience was a negative for him during the election.
ReplyDelete-Heath Wheat
I believe that President Obama is strongest in Courage and Understanding. It takes tremendous courage to ask for the amount of moneyh he has to help bail the economy out. Though many people believe he is doing the wrong thing, he firmly believes that it is right and stands by it. Also, he has a tremendous understanding of constitutionalism. To have graduated from Harvard Law magnum cum laude, one would have to be extremely intelligent on these matters. He also has a degree in political science. The two traits I believe he is weakest in is experience and Political savvy. The reason is that he has only been in politics since 1996 and that isnt as experienced as some other presidents have been. Also, being politically savvy comes with experience so I believe that he is going to learn a lot along the way which may or may not lead to some mistakes. --Adam Wise
ReplyDeleteI can easily pick apart both good and bad qualities about President Obama. However, when I browse the attributes in question, two stand out in my mind: experience and intellectual honesty.
ReplyDeleteWhile President Obama may be experienced in the many facets of politics, he most certainly isn't very experienced in foreign policy, as opposed to John McCain that is. I admire, however, the fact that President Obama was honest enough to admit that John McCain was the better man for the job when it came to foreign affairs. Obama can handle many of our affairs and solve many of our problems, but he is weak in this particular area, yet the fact that he acknowledged it gives me high hopes for the job that he intends to do.
In contrast, I feel he is very polished in intellectual honesty. A good example would be late last year during the debates when he and John McCain were going head to head. At one point, John McCain seemingly "lost it" and constantly ran Obama in the ground. Rather than defend his territory and state his own case in a positive manner, he simply took a few "jabs" at Obama and threw insults out. Rather than play McCain's silly game, Obama showed enough decency by simply ignoring McCain's outcry. At the end of the day, much talk was about how poor McCain did rather than how well either of them did. By remaining an upstanding candidate, Obama prevailed. So far, Obama has shown respect to others, no matter what, and has made the commitment to serving the public, as the text says, "with a sense of decency, integrity, and fair play."
-Michael Baltzegar
I believe that President Obama holds many attributes that are ideal to candidates. I think his strongest are communication and morale building. His strongest is communication because he was able to bring millions of people together to support him in his run for presidency and he ran blogs and other forms of communications. The whole world is in love with him because he is a great communicator. His other strong attribute is morale building because he lifts peoples spirts and lets them come together in a common cause and want to go out and do public works. His two weakest attributes are his inexperience and his listening skills when it comes to republicans and democrats. Obama only served a short time in the senate and has very little experience when it comes with dealing with other countries or the military. "A leader has to both listen to us and lead us." While Obama listens to both the republicans and certain democrats, he tends to hear what he wants to hear and more or less do what he wants to do when it comes to policies.
ReplyDeleteKemberly Merritt
ReplyDeleteJune 8, 2009
APLS 463
The first ideal attribute President Obama is relatively strong in is courage. He has the courage to run for President of the United States of America. As an African American man he knew that he would face and endure very hardship trying to make this a reality in the world. President Obama is the President and this position is always being monitored and judge by those whom like and dislike him. When Obama was selected as the President of the United States of America he accepted a great challenge to get America back on track with many serious issues that would take a very long time to accomplish. The jobs of President of the United States take a lot of courage, because he is the voice for the United States to the entire world. President Obama is trying to get jobs back into America and also trying to keep the economy from failing and many other things. I also think that President Obama second ideal attribute is Intellectual honesty. When President Obama was running for President, he did not hide any thing from the United States he allowed everyone to know about his past, present and his future. By doing this the people of the United States was more willing to trust him, because he opened himself to the people to see who he really is. President Obama talked about his mother and his father. He explained his views about the different issues that were discussed during the campaign. He was not afraid to admit that he did not have all the experience, but he wants the people to know that he was willing to learn no matter what. President Obama life speaks for itself when it comes to commitment and service. President Obama reaches out to the people in the public to show them that he was there for them as well. He has formed many organizations and worked in many communities and offices to help the public as a whole. He plays fair games he kept his cool through out the election and remained truthful.
The first ideal attribute President Obama is relatively weak in, is experience. Although he does not have as many years as other president have had working in the field of politics, he doing well to start off. During the campaign if other mention by his opponent Senator John Mc Cain, that President Obama does not have as many years as Senator John McCain, one reason is because he is not as old as John McCain. I believe as President Obama continues to be our President he will gain more experience. Although I could not truly find another weakness; I would also say that President Obama is relatively weak in tenacity because I believe it very hard for him to separate the world issues that may affect his family and the people of his race as a leader
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI will do this in two comments so I do not go over the limit on space.
ReplyDeleteLet’s briefly look at each of the eleven ideal attributes and then apply them to Obama. One source I am using here is the new book by reporter Richard Wolf, who followed the Obama campaign. His book is called RENEGADE, the name the Secret Service used as his radio code name. And the name fits in many ways. That is because he took a very unconventional route in his campaign, starting by running with very little experience, not in a sense waiting his turn. He ran a 50 state strategy, not as targeted a strategy as most candidates. He found new ways of raising money and even turned down the public money for the general campaign. He went abroad and made major speeches in other nations in the middle of the campaign, a very unusual thing for candidates to do. At the same time few of his proposals during the campaign were very nonconventional for a Democrat.
1. Courage. Obama certainly has taken risks, which we saw in how he ran his campaign and see as he attempts to rescue GM and create a health care system, and effort that nearly brought the Clinton administration down. We will have to wait to see how he reacts to policy defeats. The defeats he had in the primaries he reacted well to, not getting angry or hostile, adjusting his strategy as he needed to.
2. Experience and competence in bringing people together. Many of you noted that he was short on political or policy experience, and that much is true. But his campaign team was a masterpiece in managing large groups of people with often different ideas and expectations. He seems to have learned much quickly, and the tough campaign Senator Clinton put him through was an excellent testing ground for his abilities, abilities that no one really knew he had.
3. Political savvy. To the extent that this refers to building coalitions of people with different views, this has been his style as long as he has been an adult. He did this in law school, in reaching out to Christian conservatives (Rick Warren et al) in the campaign, in speaking at the U of Notre Dame a few weeks ago in trying to find common ground on abortion, and has even attempted to work with the health insurance companies in molding a health care proposal—a lot more on that later!
4. Understanding of history and constitutionalism. As several of you pointed out, his background as a law professor makes him strong here. And he is a quick reader who goes well beyond the talking points in dealing with the history and complexities of policy problems—he is as thick on this as Palin was thin. Look at how he used Doris Kearns-Goodwin’s TEAM OF RIVALS, a great history book about the Lincoln and his cabinet, as a model for his bringing together people like Hillary and several Republicans into the cabinet, including the Secretary of Defense!
5. Ability and judgment to recruit was advisors and effective administrators. We will have to wait to see about administrators, but he did recruit an excellent campaign team and he put together the team of superstars for his cabinet, as I mentioned in the last point.
6. Listening, learning and teaching skills so he can both listen and lead. From what Richard Wolf has said about Obama, he does listen to a lot of people and then makes up his mind. He seems to do this well in the town meeting format we saw in the campaign. His speech on race relations after the revelations about the radical statements made by his minister, Reverend Wright, suggest that he is capable of teaching the nation about the complexity of family and friends and love for them, even when they are terribly wrong.
Second half of Bob's comment:
ReplyDelete7. Programmatic ideas and wisdom to guide his agenda and not get lost in trivia. No question that he has ideas. Perhaps too many. But he seems to have a disciplined plan on what the order in which they should be pursued. He has refused to push on things like gays in the military, because (as a student of history), he knew that these kind of issues undercut the energy needed to focus on issues affecting more Americans, like the economy and health care.
8. Communication and motivational skills to rally the public. He seems destined to go down in history with the skills similar to those of Ronald Reagan. He seems to be able to inspire people by his ability to make people feel that he is telling them the truth and tell a story about himself and the nation that makes us feel good about ourselves.
9. Tenacity and discipline and strong self-esteem so he can laugh at himself and learn from mistakes—this is the James David Barber’s “active-negative” presidential personality type lacks. Too early to tell on this one for sure, but he has adjusted course when it was necessary, and even when it meant breaking a promise, like the decision to forego the public campaign funds because taking them would put him at a political advantage. Now that pragmatic decision undercuts part of the next point, but if he admits doing this and gives reasons that are credible, then he can survive such shifts. The next thing he may have to do is break his promise not to tax health care benefits in some why so that he can find a way to pay for his health care proposals—that will be a much tougher sell! Speaking of laughing at himself, did any of you see the carving he found in the pyramid of a person with big ears who looked like him? He seemed to have a good deal of fun at laughing at his own self-image in a carving that was thousands of years old—it really did look like him!
10. Intellectual honesty and respect for others with a sense of fair play. We already said he may have some problems here, but no question he shows respect for others. He was always respectful of McCain even when McCain attacked him in the third debate. This “cool” image, by the way, is the ideal image for television, in which people who show too much emotion are rejected by the audience. He may not be quite honest in asking Republican Senators to consider his Supreme Court nominees on their experience and credentials when he opposed Bush nominees on the basis of ideological opinions.
11. Morale-building and community building skills to help bring us together in times of crisis. Who he is, a person of both the white and black communities, allows him to play a unique role here. And for those who want racial harmony, he is particularly attractive as he extends the American dream to minority groups and preaches the discipline of hard work education as a great equalizer. Nothing radical about his position here at all. He energized people in the campaign in ways that none have seen since Kennedy. He was as much rock star as politician.
Ok—conclusion. He has some strengths in all areas, but may have a few problems in intellectual honesty as he shifts positions and in political experience. But on the latter he seems a very quick learner and is self-secure enough to bring in strong people who will give strong opinions, like Joe Biden, who criticized Obama for being too much of a “show horse” publicity seeker when in the Senate. Obama did not let that stand in the way of choosing him as VP. Nor did he let his anger at tactics used by the Clinton campaign against him stand in the way of choosing her as Sec of State.
Of course, history will be the test for how good he really is on all these things. Bob B