Ordinary Gweilo

I watched part of the first Presidential debate on Friday morning. No surprises, really – Kerry is the better debater, whereas Bush has that folksy thing that you either love or hate. I doubt that it changed anyone’s mind about Bush, whereas Kerry probably convinced a few undecided voters that he would make a decent President. Initial polls suggest that he may now have closed the gap on Bush, but there is apparently a long history of the candidate who ‘wins’ the first debate going on to lose the election

Don’t worry, I’m not about to start pontificating about the election. Well, not really, but I do find the contrast between the two main candidates quite intriguing.

Maybe George Bush really is dumb. Maybe John Kerry can’t make his mind up. Perhaps Bush has the “vision thing” whereas Kerry doesn’t. Perhaps Kerry is a good (but dull) public speaker whilst Bush is much better (as long as he remembers his lines).

However, these characterisations strike me as being the product of lazy journalism (probably influenced by spin doctors). Of course it’s easy to portray Kerry as someone who can’t make his mind up, but the reality is that these are complex issues and his biggest problem is that he thinks out loud and then fails to communicate his conclusions in a simple, easy-to-understand way. Equally, although it’s easy to characterize Bush as an idiot, you can’t deny that he has achieved a great deal (whether you approve or not).

In truth, I’m not sure I care whether politicians are intellectuals. In fact, many of the most successful politicians of recent years haven’t really been intellectuals. It’s not hard to see why Tony Blair is Prime Minister rather than Gordon Brown, and equally easy to see why Michael Foot lost the 1983 election by such a wide margin. Yet Foot and Brown are obviously intellectuals, whereas Thatcher and Blair have different strengths. Blair, like Alec Douglas-Home, is said to be fairly hopeless at economics, and Thatcher had other people to do her thinking for her.

And I haven’t even mentioned Ronnie Reagan.

It’s interesting to remember that not that long ago people didn’t even expect to know anything about their political leaders – they were remote figures, and the media treated them with deference (in one TV interview, Harold Macmillan was asked if there was anything he wanted to tell the nation, which was about as fierce as it got). Things started to change in the sixties, and Alec Douglas-Home was (I think) the first British PM to be lampooned on TV, and 20 years later, Michael Foot was probably the first party leader to be destroyed by the media. I actually thought that ‘Spitting Image’ might do something similar to Tony Blair with their portrayal of him as an excitable schoolboy, but it didn’t seem to resonate in the same way as their David Steel or John Major puppets. The latter portrayal presumably had an element of truth in it, but I am assured that Major is actually quite impressive if you meet him in person (though he was certainly not a success as PM).

In the US, it is widely believed that Richard Nixon lost the 1962 election when he appeared pale and unwell in a Presidential debate against a tanned and relaxed John F Kennedy. Then Ronald Reagan managed to deliver some brilliant one-liners (against Carter and Mondale), whilst Michael Dukakis came across as cold and uncaring when debating with George Bush. Style rather than substance seems to be what really counts.

Tony Blair may be more personable than Michael Howard, and George Bush more likeable than John Kerry, but we are not choosing someone to come round to our homes for dinner or for a few pints in a local bar! We all know from business that the most effective bosses are not always the ones we personally like, and conversely that there are plenty of nice guys who are poor bosses.

But let’s get real – although we may think we know these people, the truth is that we don’t. We are only seeing what the unholy alliance of the media and spin doctors want us to see. Making judgements based on this misinformation is highly dubious, but millions of dollars are spent on political advertising in an effort to persuade voters to do just that.

Even if we did know the candidates’ real character and personality, would it help? I’m not so sure it would.

So does experience matter? Again, probably not. Being US President is pretty much a one-off job, and it’s not as if you get selected because of your CV or personal references. Many eminently well-qualified and apparently suitable candidates have missed out on the job, whilst peanut farmers, actors and failed businessmen have been elected. Past experience seems to be no guide as to whether a president will be a success or failure.

In the UK, it almost seems as if experience is a hinderance to success – although many Prime Ministers first served time in the so-called “great offices of state”, neither Margaret Thatcher nor Tony Blair did so. The former had been Education Secretary, but Blair had no ministerial experience at all prior to becoming PM. By contrast, John Major was Chancellor of the Exchequer and briefly Foreign Secretary before unexpectedly getting the top job, but I don’t think anyone would seriously argue that he was a better PM than his predecessor or successor. Likewise, although Jim Callaghan was far better ‘qualified’ than Harold Wilson or Ted Heath, it didn’t seem to help him very much.

So where does that leave us? Just as confused as ever, I fear. The only consolation is that it may not matter all that much who is elected – life will pretty much carry on as normal whoever wins the Presidential Election next month.