The major thoughts rattling through my head after the John Edwards news last week seem to be as follows:
- Good thing the Democrats didn’t nominate this guy.
- Man, I feel awful for the Edwards supporters who feel let down or worse.
- If Obama ever does something this dumb, you’re gonna need to keep me away from windows and sharp objects for at least a month.
There is one other thread, though. I’ve noticed a number of people on the blogosphere saying that this isn’t such a huge deal, and that their support of Edwards was because of the positions Edwards took, not who Edwards was himself. And while I see where they’re coming from, I have to say that I think it’s a terribly incorrect way of viewing the role we voters play in the American government at this point in time. Outside of the occasional initiative ore referendum, we pull the lever for a name, not a policy position. And that’s not an accident.
For starters, even if a candidate completely agrees with you on all of your policy issues, getting those policies enacted is a personal skill. You have to decide if the candidate can do that. Part of that skill in enacting policies depends on the popularity of the official doing the enacting. And part of a public official’s popularity depends on how the public reacts to that official – on how we feel about him or her as a person.
Beyond that, there are any number of ways that a particular policy can be implemented or approached. Those decisions are going to be in the hands of the public official, and they can determine whether or not your goals are achieved in the way that you want them to be. So you have to decide whether this particular candidate’s approach to implementation and problems solving is one that you can get on board with.
And all of that says nothing about the fact that any leader is going to have make hundreds of unglamorous decisions about issues that you might not have given any prior thought to, so you better hope you feel good about a candidate’s judgment, level-headedness, and ability to deal with challenges.
All of this is why, on some level, most voters have to feel like they can trust something about the person they’re voting for. And we have to make these judgments about these candidates based on fairly distant signals – which is exactly why personal scandals can wind up with the legs that they do.