Competence vs. leadership

Something that has crept into the presidential campaign the last couple of weeks is the idea of competence vs. leadership. In particular, Hillary has positioned herself as the candidate of competence, with experience that will allow her to be up and running "Day 1." She seems willing to concede that Obama has the leadership edge, then discounts it as less relevant than her "35 years" fighting for the rights of, well, pretty much every interest group.

[This is not the post for it, but what is Hillary's fabled experience? I am tired of her dwelling on her years of service, which don't strike me as being so incredibly awe-inspiring. Anyway...]

I believe this dichotomy has been created by the Clinton campaign, as someone realized that Obama came across as more inspirational. But that is a false dichotomy.

First, competence and leadership are not mutually exclusive qualities. Especially for complex tasks (and the presidency certainly qualifies), the ability to lead grows directly out of one's competence. I have had managers who were technically unqualified and uninterested, and no one accepted their leadership as legitimate. The idea that leadership is an attribute that has no basis in ability is ludicrous.

But there is, I think, a larger issue. What does competence mean for the presidency? What does leadership mean?

A pretty good definition of a leader is someone who gets others to do things they'd rather not do. Where we stand as a nation right now, any truly great leader would be asking us to sacrifice for the common good. But no candidate is doing so (we remember what happened to Mondale when he suggested higher taxes - goodbye).

So there is not a lot of leadership, at least with respect to the general populace (there may be a leadership component to dealing with Congress, but it's hard to see this as either all that significant, given the egos of Congress, or the primary reason to vote for someone).

And competence? So many different people have been presidents, each one different, and the competence of each has been derived from a complex mix of personal ability and context. Many people believe that the hardest part of the job is how the president reacts to change, and that is very hard to predict. It is not at all clear that experience as a corporate lawyer, First Lady, and one-term senator beats that of a hands-on activist, state legislator, and part-of-one-term senator.

I would like to see the campaigns move more toward discussions of long-term strategies and short-term tactics. Don't tell me what program you would implement when you aren't going to be writing the bill; tell me how you will lead us back to prosperity and away from decline.