Last week I posted this chart for comparing Clinton, Johnson, and Trump on six dimensions. I scored each from 1 to 10 for each dimension, with 10 being the highest score, and then totaled scores for each candidate. (Here is the blank chart in a Word document.) My scoring is:
Here again are the follow-up questions:
1. Should each dimension be weighted equally?
2. Are there other major issues not included?
3. Should I vote my positive conscience or for the lesser of evils?
4. Do I believe in voting for the individual candidate or for the team the candidate will lead?
5. What do I think about the current two-party-dominant system?
6. Do I live in a contested state?
On social issues, Hillary and Trump are more or less equally opposed to free speech. Both should be scored “one” or at best “two”.
Way too high score for Trump’s cognitive ability…
*Slow clap*
I love this; well done
How did this idiocy find it’s way to my Google feed? And who gave this Hicks fellow a PhD? Gary Johnson??
Respectfully, I think you score Trump too high on cognitive ability given that you include judgement in that category.
And I think Clinton must be given a higher score on experience than Johnson, because SecState is incomparably more relevant experience to being president than is a governorship.
I say this as a Johnson voter.
I’m all for Gary Johnson and would love for him to be in the final presidential debate.
Where is Jill Stein?
Seriously, scoring Clinton higher is like giving Ellsworth Toohey a gold medal. I agree that Johnson is clearly the leader among these three candidates. But Clinton leading by twice more than Trump? I’d have to say her character is -5. And her foreign policy is even worse…Coordinating the arming of al Nusra in Syria, and al Qaeda affiliates in Libya isn’t heart warming. It is monstrous. Stephen go listen to some of Christopher Hitchen’s criticisms of her wonderful resume.
Josh: Basic logic and manners says that when one states an opinion one follows it with “[insert reasoning here]”. Otherwise one is being childish — which is fine if one is a child but ignorant if one is an adult.
Thanks for giving your reasons clearly, James.
About being a Johnson voter: *After* going through this exercise, I am much more inclined to vote Johnson.
Hi Robert: My 31/60 score for Hillary gives her barely 50%, which on a standard grading scale is an F. That is far from gold medal territory, yes?
Hi Regina: Fell welcome to download the scoring chart and modify and improve it how you like.
I don’t see how Gary Johnson gets an experience score of 8. His experience as governor of New Mexico is distant from the experience required to do any of the jobs Hillary Clinton has done (Senator, Secretary of State), and *extremely* distant from the job of President. Arguably, given Hillary Clinton’s relationship to Bill (not just as wife but given the specific nature of their spousal relationship), she has both gubernatorial and presidential experience on top of having been Senator and Secretary of State. I don’t see how Johnson outdoes Clinton on any plausible ranking of experience. (I take someone’s being Secretary of State to be the best possible experience a person could have for being President, short of *being* President. A Secretary of State has weightier responsibilities than a Vice President, and has to discharge them in a more independent way.)
There is another factor missing from your chart–hard to operationalize and even explain, but in my view more important than all of the other factors taken together. To isolate it, imagine a philosopher with whose political views you agree. Now imagine that this philosopher articulates an ideal political program with which you agree–as an ideal. But suppose, further, that having articulated the ideal, our philosopher (a) shows no awareness how radical his views are (not just how unpopular but how distant from current realities), (b) offers no indication how he intends to translate his ideals into practice, (c) shows no awareness of the complexity of the undertaking involved in getting us from where we are to where he wants to go, and (d) shows no awareness of the possibility of unintended consequences that might arise from efforts to realize his ideals in practice, much less contingency plans for dealing with them.
This philosopher might score perfect 10s on your chart for character, cognitive ability, economics, social issues, and foreign policy, might even have some relevant political experience, and yet might be a catastrophically bad candidate. What’s missing is what might be called a Political Rationalist Index. How rationalistic is our candidate when it comes to talking about political issues? Does he treat politics as an extension of the debating society or seminar room? Or can he operationalize political ideas into terms that will produce political results in real time–with a full grasp of the complexities involved, and a worked-out sense of how to handle any problematic contingencies that may arise?
Once you think in terms of a Political Rationalist Index, I think it starts to change many of the other scores. A political rationalist may not be an immoral person, but he is missing some significant political virtues. So I would downgrade him on “character,” but in a different sense of character than the one you have up there. A political rationalist may not be stupid or unintelligent in any straightforward sense, but he lacks specifically political judgment. So I would downgrade him on cognitive ability, understood as a specifically political form of cognitive ability. As for economics, social issues, and foreign policy, perhaps a political rationalist may say all the right things (judging “right things” by the standards of a political theory seminar), but in the absence of a worked-out account of how to operationalize those things, I would downgrade him on all three dimensions. Saying the right things is not the same as knowing how to do the right things.
For instance, suppose someone says, “I want to end US military intervention everywhere! I want a policy based on self-defense, reason, and rights!” You then ask what specific places he has in mind, and he says, “I have no idea! Everywhere means everywhere! I don’t need to know where if I want to end intervention everywhere! The precise locations are all omitted measurements.” I would say that far from being a credible candidate, such a person lacks the temperament or character of a political leader. His talk is rousing, but irresponsible. Further, he lacks cognitive ability–specifically, common sense. Common sense tells you that you can’t end a war without knowing *a lot* about the details of the undertaking. His intelligence may be genuine, but in political terms, it’s ineffective and superficial.
Further, despite my nominal agreement with the slogans he utters, I can’t really say I “agree” with him on foreign policy because it’s not clear he knows enough for anyone to agree or disagree with him. A set of slogans is not a substitute for a foreign policy.
This is an extreme example intended to convey my point; it’s not intended as a direct description of Johnson. My point is, the degree of a candidate’s commitment to or rejection of rationalism is extremely important to evaluating his candidacy for a political office, and can’t be evaluated by the method you’re using. Once we factor in a Political Rationalist Index, we have to ratchet Johnson’s scores down–way down. Put it this way: I ratcheted them far enough down to vote for Hillary Clinton. But you don’t need to accept that particular verdict to accept the general point I’m making.
Good comments, Irfan.
On executive experience: I gave weight to his business experience — that fact that he actually built and was CEO of a successful business. Also that was experience outside of politics, which is a reality connection that many who spend their lives only inside the bubble of political careers do not have. You make good points about Hillary’s close connections to the top executive, and that counts for something; but I downgraded that some since observing the top executive, however closely, is not the same sort of experience as being the person who makes the top executive decisions. Partly also because while she did hold some high positions, I do not see that she did them well — not on policy grounds, but on executive effectiveness.
I like your Political Rationalist Index. It fleshes out well part of what I include in the “judgment” component of “Cognitive Ability” — cognitive ability is not just raw intelligence or facility with principled thinking but being able to apply them in real circumstances well.
Johnson and Weld together have 4 terms of experience as public executives with actual administrative discretion powers. The other two have ZERO. Clinton was elected Senator of an easy safe Blue state that would have elected her to that position even if she was burning babies while dancing naked and high on cocaine around a bonfire of military veterans. Give me a break. Trump doesn’t even rate a mention.