orichalcum

Henrik Hertzberger, in the New Yorker, has an interesting editorial in which he suggests that the problem that many Americans had with Bush was not that he had a strong faith, but that he repeatedly emphasizes making decisions based on gut instincts rather than on the analysis of data. Putin is Good, because Bush personally likes Putin; Hussein must be eliminated, and so forth. And the problem for highly educated people of both political parties (thinking here of the enormous amount of conservative policy wonks who turned against Bush in the last few weeks) is that that mode of decision-making goes deeply against all of our training. I've been educated to believe that the correct way to make pretty much all important decisions, even including important emotional ones like major relationship issues, is to assemble the data, analyze it, and come to a thorough and well-reasoned conclusion, influenced but not determined by emotions. But if you're a voter who values overall impressions of character and "what you feel in your gut," the repeated contradictions on why we invaded Iraq may matter less to you than holistic judgments. Both Kerry and Gore, of course, gave off the impression of being people who analyzed every decision to death, whereas Clinton tried hard to hide his wonkishness (and clearly made a lot of impulse decisions.)

I don't know what the correct response is to this, though, except to say that maybe America distrusts lawyers.