Eric Herr: How did a president perform when it was improv?

To The Daily Sun,

Our presidential preferences reflect all manner of factors: our moral intuition, our sense of how the world works, a point of view on a particular issue like abortion, candidates’ records and plans, party affiliation, self-interest, and even how our spouses, friends and colleagues view the candidates. In essence, our vote reflects our judgement about which candidate, which ticket, will leave us, our families, our communities, and the country in the better place over the next four years. It is a sort of judgemental forecast.

Early in my career, experience taught me that the only thing that was going to be true of any point forecast was that it would be wrong. And now, thinking back on all the presidential history I’ve lived through I am struck by how many times my judgement of a president has been shaped not by the president’s going-in plan and its execution but by a president's leadership, policy choices, and management when the unexpected disrupted the plan. What seems quite important, perhaps even most memorable for me at least in hindsight, is “How did the president do when it was improv?”

A partial list of such improv events in my lifetime would include: the Cuban missile crisis in ‘62, the Kennedy assassination and transfer of power to Johnson in ‘63, Watergate in ‘72 and the resignation of Nixon and transfer of power to Ford in ‘74, the Iranian hostage crisis of ‘79-81, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Great Recession of ‘08, the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, and the coalescing of racial tensions in 2020. Only one of these crises was self-imposed, Watergate. In all the rest, the world intruded on the presidency and the country.

The next president, be it Trump or Biden, will no doubt similarly face the unexpected. What will it be? I haven’t a clue. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t think about which candidate is better equipped and more likely to better lead and manage in the midst of the next national surprise.

What will presidential leadership look like then? Let me suggest six dimensions of the presidency in improv. First, the president will lead, accepting the authority, responsibility and accountability underscored by the Constitution and the sign on President Truman’s desk, “The Buck Stops Here”. Second, the president will deliver the truth, no matter how difficult. In Churchill’s first speech to the House of Commons in 1940 as Prime Minister, he said, “... I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, sweat, and tears..” Third, the president will seek the truth, the facts and data, the science, and the history, and will utilize the perspective experts. Fourth, the president will act in the interests of the people, all the people. Fifth, the president will learn as experience offers new insights and shows the limitations and errors of prior assumptions, theories, and actions. And sixth, even in improv, the president will hold steadfast to American values and the U.S. Constitution.

We should accept nothing less. And we should demand in the next president the qualities of character, instinct, and ability that enable performance to these standards.

Eric Herr

Hill