Best man for another job

Ezra Klein has an interesting aside today about elections and the skills of politicians. He tosses it off, probably because he considers it obvious, but I think, like a fibrous grass, it's worth some rumination. Boiled down, he says that we elect people for reasons that don't necessarily have anything to do with the job they're going to do. He takes the example of Chris Dodd, a career politician whose eyebrows never agreed with his hair that he had gotten older. Klein quotes Nick Baumann, who praised potential Dodd replacement Sidney Blumenthal for lacking Dodd's, for Baumann, troubling coziness with obese felines (the banking system). Klein points out that what Dodd did have going for him was a familiarity with Senate procedure and a talent, or at least learned ability, to get things done within that system.

But when do we ever elect people for reasons like that--you know, reasons like they might be good at the job? It's certainly not something that comes up much in campaigns--"Vote Dodd! He Understands Procedural Votes!" More importantly, we--meaning party activists and party officials--don't nominate people for those reasons. They don't sell. We nominate people who connect with voters, who arouse passion. Partly, as Klein says, we nominate ideology. More importantly, though, we nominate charisma. Again, maybe it's an obvious point, but it does seem strange that we don't approach the people that we as a people hire collectively the same way that we approach people that we hire in our jobs.

Then again, as nerds across the world eventually find out, popularity does not cease to matter after high school. Job-specific competence matters in job interviews, but how many times does the more charismatic person get the hire, regardless? Charisma matters in any interpersonal setting--from the job interview to the promotion decision. And charisma matters in job functions, too. In some way, the reasons we elect people--passion and charisma--are actually relevant to the job they will eventually do: a leader who can illicit passionate and positive responses from voters will likely be able to do so from other legislators, a key function in actually doing the job. Obama, for example, dripped charisma like Patrick Ewing dripped sweat, and, conceivably (though not necessarily so far in practice) he can also aim his overactive charisma glands at legislators, to help get things done. But what about organizing a bureaucracy? Delegating authority? Wading through massive amounts of information to extract the meaningful bits necessary for a decision? Choosing the right drapes for the Oval Office? Do we vote on those things? Certainly not directly. Obama did show, in organizing his campaign, many of those skills, but I doubt such considerations were on most people's minds when they voted for him. I think sometimes that we vote for qualified politicians almost in spite of ourselves--which is a scary thought.