Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Who is McCain? PersonalityTraits

Saint Michael Traveler


Source: McCain Blends Instinct with Political Calculation

Download audio from the above link.

How would he process a national emergency? McCain in his book "Worth the Fighting For," he writes “As a politician, I am instinctive, often impulsive.” He also writes:” "I don't torture myself over decisions. I make them as quickly as I can, quicker than the other fellow, if I can. Often, my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint."

Former Senator Gary Hart (D), a friend of Senator McCain and a groomsman in John and Cindy McCain's wedding describes McCain traits by ” Now, he's a smart guy or he wouldn't be where he is, but I don't think -- I think he'd be the first to say he's not a rocket scientist or a pure analytical brain, if you will. I think he, John, reacts to things.”

Norman Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute says: ”John McCain is a fighter pilot. A lot of his persona comes from being a fighter pilot.
This is a man who not only constantly questions authority, but is fond of making last-minute, from-the-gut, impulsive, risk-taking decisions, and believing to his bones that there may be a risk here, but it will pay off.
An impulsive decision-making style is fine if you're riding a jet. An impulsive decision-making style is fine if you're piloting a jet in combat. It's fine if you're a senator where the consequences are not going to be that long-lasting. It's a real question mark when you move into the presidency.”
Are these traits make Senator McCain fit to be our President?

1 comment:

  1. First, I found your site via Informed Consent. I got to the latter via the AARP forum where your comment had been reprinted.

    Now I apologize for leaving an OT comment but you strike me as someone who appreciates tangential circuity.

    Specifically, my comment is about fighter pilots, personality profile and problem solving tendencies. Perhaps the best context of what I intend to convey (albeit circuitously) comes from the NYer article called The Checklist.
    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=1

    It is likely that success in WW2 was owing to the development of the preflight checklist. The article says flying in those days was

    …a culture defined by how unbelievably dangerous the job was. Test pilots strapped themselves into machines of barely controlled power and complexity, and a quarter of them were killed on the job. The pilots had to have focus, daring, wits, and an ability to improvise—the right stuff. But as knowledge of how to control the risks of flying accumulated—as checklists and flight simulators became more prevalent and sophisticated—the danger diminished, values of safety and conscientiousness prevailed, and the rock-star status of the test pilots was gone.

    Iow, over time, the idea that pilots were rock stars evolved to pragmatism. Success is not an affect of bravery but of prudence. Prudence = Rational + Predictable. (My entry on this is here http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/cop_outs_or_checklists/)

    This is particularly significant when one examines problem solving scenarios. Typically there are two kinds described as "first order processing" and "second order processing". The first sort is characterized by "heroism" (fighter pilot in this case). This relies on seat of the pants quick action to resolve a conflict. Culturally, we assign a lot of brownie points for this. Less known but better to implement is second order processing. This sort of problem resolution is characterized by analysis to ferret the causes of defects (the root of problems) to prevent them from ever happening again. Being that I work in manufacturing, this is a favorite topic of mine. I'll include the links here but I won't be offended in the slightest if you delete them -or even this comment altogether.
    http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/problems_in_problem_prevention/
    http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/becoming_a_lean_manufacturer/
    http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/the_perils_of_diy/

    In circuitous summary, McCain is an example of first order processing while Obama is an example of the second.

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