Picking a President
Over the next 18 months Americans will be picking a President. Last week Senator Ted Cruz announced that he is going to run for the Republican Party nomination in 
the 2016 US Presidential election. I’ve been asked many times what I think of him, or of the other anticipated candidates. While I typically like to refrain from commenting on any particular politician, preferring to focus solely on policies, I think this announcement warrants analysis.
First, the President of the United States is arguably one of, if not the single most powerful person in the world. The US is the wealthiest nation on the planet, possesses the strongest military and is the third most populous, after China and India. The role is a massive responsibility, which very few out of the some 7.3 billion people on the planet are capable of handling successfully.
As someone who has been responsible for hiring and occasionally, rather sadly, firing employees, I know that the most important step for successfully selecting a candidate is to know just what traits they must have in order to be successful – political candidates are no different.
A candidate for President of the United States requires, at a minimum, these attributes:
- A clear understanding of one’s view of the appropriate role of government in people’s lives, the ability to communicate that view succinctly and to accurately assess legislation that is (and will in the future be) consistent with this view.
- The ability to focus the efforts of large organizations combined with a relentless desire to continually improve results relative to costs.
- The ability to work productively with people whose ideology and/or background vastly differs from yours.
- Humility – an awareness that you will not always be right, thus a candidate must possess a desire to seek the council of others, (particularly those with differing viewpoints) and a willingness to admit when you have been wrong so that an alternative path can be tried.
- Strong communication skills:
- The ability to quickly understand your counterparty’s wants, needs and fears.
- The ability to clearly convey your goals in a dignified manner that gives your counterparty a sense of being respected so that they are able to listen.
- Enough experience to know when the time for words has passed and action is required.
- The ability to serve as a strong leader for the American people, instilling a sense of pride and confidence in our nation’s ability to overcome challenges and in our ability as individual Americans to achieve our dreams.]
Any politician’s political views are important only after they have illustrated convincingly that they have the ability to do the job. Anyone who has ever been responsible for hiring people has learned that it does you no good to hire someone who says everything you want to hear, but doesn’t have the skills to actually get the job done the way they say they can.
Without getting into the nitty gritty, in my opinion Senator Cruz does not demonstrate satisfactory skills in all the areas mentioned above, particularly with respect to the ability to lead large organizations. That is not to say that he wouldn’t be able to do that successfully, perhaps he would be a natural, but he has not already demonstrated the skill set. The role of the President is an enormous challenge for anyone and I prefer to not take the risk of having someone learn too much while on the job. The nation is facing enormous challenges that are becoming more and more impossible to solve as the years go by. We need a president who already has the necessary skills and can quickly and effectively step up to those challenges.