Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump have all been able to capitalize on voters’ discontent with status quo politicians by portraying themselves as “outsiders” who aren’t tainted by the political culture of lobbying and special interests. I’m focusing on Republicans for the most part, since they refer to themselves as “outsiders.” Jeb Bush was the “disrupter” for a while before he became the fixer, and only Clinton has declared herself an outsider on the Democratic side. Hear it in their own words:

Carson     Fiorina  Trump

“Political outsider” is certainly an accurate description in terms of their political experience. But the question remains whether political experience is actually an asset in governing or a liability. Many primary voters have placed it in the liability column. “Politician” has a distinctly unpleasant ring to it (even the insider politicians call themselves outsiders: Clinton). I’m not ready to call the lack of experience a virtue (except on the primary campaign trail), but I offer three reasons to be circumspect about electing those who don’t have any experience to govern effectively.

  1. Corporate boardrooms are not democracies. (I’ve included Carson in this group since he points to his corporate board experience, but surgical suites are not democracies either). In these situations, there is a vast power differential between the person leading the meeting and the rest of those attending it. Although political maneuvering certainly exists, it’s usually for job survival or resource allocation rather than compromise. During a training session where I was explaining the different types of decision-making, one of the participants said: “Around here, we use the right chair theory of decision-making.” Curious, I asked him to elaborate on the theory. His explanation: “If you’re sitting in the right chair (the boss’s), your decision is the right one.” Politicians have to deal with a wide variety of constituencies, but CEO’s can rely on fiat power. A fiat is an imperial decree or directive issued by a ruler. It isn’t open to questioning or debate. To see the tenacity of this idea, note that it is exemplified all the way from Pharaoh’s edict in the epic The Ten Commandments when he says “So let it be written, so let it be done,” to Jean Luc Picard’s frequent imperative in Star Trek: TNG:  “make it so.” Outsiders may be surprised to find the actual process of governing far less hospitable to fiat power than they are used to.
  1. We don’t have much of a sample on which to judge the effectiveness of those with little or no political experience. Historically, only 5 U.S. Presidents hadn’t held political office when elected. Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower all had military experience on a grand scale (and that requires some political experience). Taylor and Grant are consistently rated in the fourth quartile of successful U.S. Presidents. Taft served as Governor-General of the Philippines (for an excellent account of his political experience, see Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism) and Hoover served as Secretary of Commerce under the Harding and Coolidge administrations.

 

  1. There’s a lot they don’t know. Heraclitis writes: “Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.” These candidates seem not to know about the particular details nor about geopolitical reality. When challenged, their responses tend to fall into one of three categories: Hiring smart people, revising history and fabricating data that gets expressed as facts.

 

One can only hope they would hire smart people, regardless of how much they themselves know, but sometimes it sounds as if what they need is a stable of tutors. What do we know about the smart people they would hire? Names are scarce or non-existent.

 

Historical revisionism can take many different forms and gets expressed in different degrees, but asserting Nazi gun control policies enabled the holocaust ranks near the top. Carson Firorina’s tenure at HP continues as a war of interpretation. Fiorina Trump’s latest on cheering Muslims just might be his best stab at revisionism, and that’s saying a lot given how much there is to choose from.

 

No candidate can claim a monopoly on making up facts, but some appear to be more comfortable with the practice than others. And those most comfortable with it appear to be the supporters of those candidates, along with the “tamestream” media who are too timid to challenge them for fear of appearing biased. I’m reminded of Orwell’s description of one of English Socialism’s slogans in 1984: “Ignorance is Strength.” When questioned on the veracity of these assertions, a common response is “prove it didn’t happen.” It’s no coincidence this fallacy is known as Argument from Ignorance.

 Like baseball, three strikes and you’re out. Let the American Pharaohs return to the boardroom (or grain silos) and let the politicians take their place in the situation room.