The Election October 28, 1992 Ross Perot's biggest mistake had to do with comparing gov- ernment with running a business. The real explanation for gov- ernment, at this level, has to do with leadership. Biologically this is an ancient quality. Groups of individuals in many spe- cies have leaders. Humans, and other primates, have probably always had leaders. Leadership is not like running a business. It is more like sexuality. It is irrational and unpredictable. A leader has to be prepared for anything. A leader has to be able to handle everything unknowable, unexpected. Consider human history. More specifically, King Solomon and his seemingly impossible quandary with the baby claimed by two mothers. Every leader wants to have, or be thought to have, the wisdom of Solo- man. The leader has to be prepared for constant competition from within and outside the group. Conditions never before encoun- tered have to be handled. King Solomon managed that impossible paradox of the two mothers by proposing dividing the child and giving half to each woman. The real mother could not live with that prospect and gave up her half. From that he could clearly see which was the real mother. She got her baby. Another favor- ite example of the problem of leadership comes from a film, made some years ago, of a group of monkeys with a leader being chal- lenged by a younger male (and males are the leaders in most higher level grouping species). The younger member successfully challenged the older, long-time leader of the group. The defeat- ed former leader went off to lick his wounds. A short while later a wild dog pack came into the territory of the monkeys. The older, experienced leader, unafraid of the dogs, and probably knowing their limits in getting around in trees and the rocky surroundings where the group of monkeys lived, was able to rout the invaders and resume his old position of leadership. The younger challenger was only able to physically defeat him in only in a straight-on fight, but was unable to do anything about the dog pack except scurry out of their way. It is the same for humans. The leader has got to be able to take everything thrown at him (or, in some cases, her--consider the recent case of Geraldine Ferraro). Ross Perot could not manage everything being thrown at him. It doesn't matter if any, or all of it, is true. He has to be able to take it. Bill Clinton has demonstrated such an ability. From recent political history there are many examples of wilting candidates who crum- pled at the first solid blow to their campaigns. Consider Ronald (I paid for this microphone!) Reagan and the 1980 New Hampshire primary campaign, which was probably the seminal event in his success. Or Joe (copycat) Biden in 1988, and the plagiarism charge that caused him to get out of the kitchen (to borrow a phrase from Harry Truman--a guy who could also take it). There are many more examples, Republican and Democrat, where the first unexpected political whack on the head caused the prospective leader to fall aside. And sometimes a candidate can rise com- pletely to the occasion and be swept far ahead of everyone else. But Ross has gotten himself back into the fray and seems prepared to tough it out this time--although he has found a very clever way to reduce the amount of time he has to stand in a harsh light. One could also say that this ability to come up with this solution to avoid attacks is a good sign of a leader able to find ways of getting more to the heart of matters. And nearly everyone would agree that he is the most capable candidate at doing that. You might not agree with a lot of what he has to say, but everyone knows the other candidates are cautiously avoiding some big issues coming down the road, right at us, at full speed. Ross Perot is an always-drinking-from-a-firehose kind of guy and is much admired for saying what he thinks. But who is going to win the election? For some time the polls have been saying Clinton. Unfortunately, for Clinton, polls are not used to pick the President. This writer expects President Bush to pull out a squeaker, Clinton second, and Perot third. Consider the Harvey Gantt Effect. In 1990 Harvey Gantt ran against Jesse Helms in North Carolina. All the polls showed Gantt winning. Even exit polls showed him winning. But when the real votes were counted... he lost! Consider the British elec- tion of a few months ago. The Liberals were expected, again, by the polls, to oust the Conservatives. That didn't happen. So what is going on here? Imagine that you are an American and you are sitting at home some evening. Suddenly the phone rings. A pollster is calling to ask you some questions. You could be anywhere from, say 500 to 2000 people, being called for this particular poll. You aren't so dumb. You know, or can figure out, that your opinion, your vote, in this poll will have anywhere from 10,000 to a million times as much influence as your actual, single vote on election day. You know that politicians in both camps (Republican and Democratic) are going to being looking very carefully at the results of this poll and probably making decisions, changing positions, slightly changing posi- tions, modifying, etc, on the basis of this small sample of people. And you are one of them! It is not hard to imagine that millions of Republicans were disgusted with the Republican Con- vention. They are Republicans who are for religious, political, cultural, artistic, sexual-orientation tolerance. They are Republicans in favor of government social programs, equal rights, civil rights and abortion. You don't have to be a rocket scien- tist to see that the strident positions of the campaign have disappeared, largely, from sight. Do Americans who get calls from pollsters in the night know all this? This writer thinks many of them do. And then there is the press. Yes, those people who, if they had gotten of their... chairs, gone out and poked around, could have kept the citizenry much better informed about the various financial and other disasters that only get exposed the day after the election. Take the S & L crisis of 1988. Take the whole eight year Iran/Iraq war and all the... stuff our government engaged in. Seventeen years after the Vietnam War we may be getting a clearer picture of what happened to the MIA/POWs. Every Republican and Democrat could make up their own list from every election. One has to admit, though, that this election has been covered much better by the press--except in one respect. The press frequently compares final election results with current poll results. This is particularly misleading when it is histor- ically clear that polls change rapidly, especially as election day approaches. But that does not mean the public is satisfied. Consider the thumb-your-nose at the press effect. Why not manip- ulate the press, via the polls, in a manner similar to the way in which the public believes the press manipulates them? This writer thinks some members of the public, via polls, and other means, might be doing just that. Or are things really bad, economically, in this country, and Bush will be defeated for that reason? Inflation? Lowest it has long time. Energy prices? Lowest they have been in a long time (Gulf War, a big help there) [pardon my reversion to a small example of Bush-speak there]. Unemployment? Not as bad as it has been, considering the current state of world-wide economic competition--more Americans are working than ever before. More women have jobs than ever before. More minorities have jobs than ever before. How about the end of the Cold War? Its history! Well, maybe Bush won't win. Maybe he will be like Winston Churchill, turned out after the victory of WW II. Maybe he's not the right person in the new conditions. Maybe. There is one more effect to be considered. Living in Massa- chusetts, one can't forget the McGovern Effect. In 1972 George McGovern won the state of Massachusetts. Richard Nixon won everything else. Massachusetts is a Bill Clinton kind of state, a McGovern kind of state. That kind of atmosphere tends to... how shall I say it?... corrupt the thinking of the good citizens of this cradle of Democracy. But, hey, you never know! I could be wrong about this. Comments to: Richard Gardner Box 1067 Harvard Sq Stn Cambridge MA 02238-1067 rgardner@charon.mit.edu (Internet)