TR EMERITUS

I’m reading ancient Greek literature and history as our Presidential election campaign enters its last weeks. I now have some doubts about how we choose candidates. The Greeks had a clearer vision than we have. For instance, they observe that failure does not imply ineptitude. Think about Oedipus. He serves as the prototype for the Athenian statesman, nevertheless, Oedipus dies a horrible death, banished and blind. Why? not due to his lack of competence. He is incredibly intelligent, tenacious, and brave. He is, nevertheless, a victim of fate.

For the dramatist, the gods’ will or their foreknowledge of what must occur—determine fate. But I also prefer chance to fate, but we don’t use either one nearly enough to describe why things go wrong for politicians. We frequently overlook the possibility that even the most well-thought-out and executed decisions might fail for factors beyond of a leader’s control.

The personal flaws of their leaders didn’t bother the Greeks as much as they did us. However, any ‘indication of weakness’, especially in the closing stages of our presidential elections, may work strongly against a candidate. The main source of our distorted perspective is an incorrect comparison between politics and competitive sports. Even when their opponent was plainly stronger and only lost due to horrible luck, or lack of self-preparation and training. All three decisions—hiring a worker, selecting a spouse, and picking a president — seem to fit neatly into the sports model.

In actuality, there is a clear distinction between politics and sports. The only purpose of a game’s rules is to decide who will win. What the winner does following the game is irrelevant in terms of the regulations. The “rules” governing real-life decisions, however, must be reliable indicators of what the victor will do once the decision has been made. In an election we need reasons for thinking that the winner will go on to be a good president. There’s no reason to think that someone who has been successful just out of luck will continue to be successful; and there’s every reason to think that anyone is likely to act wrongly sometimes in the future. Because of this, it is incorrect to equate competence with success or to view sporadic slip-ups as disqualifying. Elections are made amusing by looking for crucial mistakes in the final few weeks, which also provides lazy or disinterested voters with a quick decision-making option. However, it has little to do with selecting a presidential candidate wisely.

The more serious error, though, is to think that a presidential election should typically revolve around the candidates’ qualifications and moral character. Character flaws and ineptitude that would disqualify someone are improbable under the current system. Anyone who has managed to secure a national party’s nomination is likely to possess a sufficient level of competence for leading. And given the level of scrutiny candidates receive, any severe character faults would have been already uncovered.

Therefore, how should we elect our president? Typically, I suggest voting for the party that the individual represents. PAP, Opposition and Non-partizan. All that we can realistically anticipate is that the nation will likely move in the ideological direction of the party of the victorious candidate. Naturally, a large portion of voters have a strong party loyalty. Others will think we should lean in a certain partisan way at least for the next six years. The best course of action is to vote for the party you support because there is no reliable way to forecast who will prove to be the “better man”; that is largely a matter of luck.

Sjorne Shen

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