Good Judgement in Leaders

Aug 23, 2010 Editorial

In 2005, Michael Ignatieff, the noted commentator left the halls of Harvard for the political hustings of Canada. By 2007, he had recanted his early support for the Iraq war and offered the following (excerpted) thoughts on political judgement. It might be of use to some of our aspiring Presidential candidates.
“I’ve learned that acquiring good judgment in politics starts with knowing when to admit your mistakes.” The attribute that underpins good judgment in politicians is a sense of reality.
“What is called wisdom in statesmen,” Berlin wrote, referring to figures like Roosevelt and Churchill, “is understanding rather than knowledge — some kind of acquaintance with relevant facts of such a kind that it enables those who have it to tell what fits with what; what can be done in given circumstances and what cannot, what means will work in what situations and how far, without necessarily being able to explain how they know this or even what they know.”
Politicians cannot afford to cocoon themselves in the inner world of their own imaginings. They must not confuse the world as it is with the world as they wish it to be.
In politics, learning from failure matters as much as exploiting success. Samuel Beckett’s “Fail again. Fail better” captures the inner obstinacy necessary to the political art. Churchill and De Gaulle kept faith with their own judgment when smart opinion believed them to be mistaken. Their willingness to wait for historical validation, even if far off, looks now like greatness.
Yet in some areas, political and personal judgments are very different. In private life, you take attacks personally and would be a cold fish if you didn’t. In politics, if you take attacks personally, you display vulnerability. Politicians have to learn to appear invulnerable without appearing inhuman. Being human, they are bound to revenge insults. But they also have to learn that revenge, as it has been said, is a dish best served cold.
Nothing is personal in politics, because politics is theatre. It is part of the job to pretend to have emotions that you do not actually feel.
It is a common spectacle in legislatures for representatives to insult one another in the chamber and then retreat for a drink in the bar afterward.
This saving hypocrisy of public life is not available in private life. There we play for keeps. In public life, language is a weapon of war and is deployed in conditions of radical distrust. All that matters is what you said, not what you meant. The political realm is a world of lunatic literalism. The slightest crack in your armor — between what you meant and what you said — can be pried open and the knife driven home.
Fixed principle matters. There are some goods that cannot be traded, some lines that cannot be crossed, some people who must never be betrayed.
But fixed ideas of a dogmatic kind are usually the enemy of good judgment. Ideological thinking of this sort bends what Kant called “the crooked timber of humanity” to fit an abstract illusion. Politicians with good judgment bend the policy to fit the human timber. Not all good things, after all, can be had together, whether in life or in politics.
Knowing the difference between a good and a bad compromise is more important in politics than holding onto pure principle at any price. A good compromise restores the peace and enables both parties to go about their business with some element of their vital interest satisfied. A bad one surrenders the public interest to compulsion or force.
Good judgment in politics, it turns out, depends on being a critical judge of yourself. People with good judgment listen to warning bells within. Prudent leaders force themselves to listen equally to advocates and opponents of the course of action they are thinking of pursuing.
They do not suppose that their own good intentions will guarantee good results. They do not suppose they know all they need to know. If power corrupts, it corrupts this sixth sense of personal limitation on which prudence relies.

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