Some Advice for Senator McCain
Full disclosure: I am an American and I am registered as an Independent voter, which means I have no political party affiliation. I am approaching this election cycle for the President of the United States with an open mind and lots of questions about the economy, global warming, the role of religion in politics, and the Middle East, among others. I also know that the answers given to these questions during a campaign are not always reflective of what will actually happen if the candidate is elected.
I realize that commitments made in any political campaign are idealistic—promises about affordable healthcare for all, a good education for all those who want it, or how the candidate will revive the economy. All politicians do this. It’s a fact of life. Then, after being elected, they find out that it’s more difficult to implement some of the things that they committed to in the campaign—they are faced with the reality of actually governing. It’s disappointing, but any realist expects this to happen.
In view of this fact, I focus more on how candidates think and how they approach solving problems. Are they good at synthesizing data? Do they have the patience and humility to listen and learn? Do they have the intelligence and intellectual rigor to sift through conflicting points of view from close advisors and do they have the common sense to make a good decision? Are they more bound by ideological fervor than by an obligation, as a leader, to seek the truth? How do they apply the lessons of the past to chart a course for the future?
These questions are some of the very questions I would ask when evaluating corporate leaders when I was a partner in one of the world’s largest executive search firms.
Time and experience in that role have taught me that the real answer to a question might lie hidden in someone’s body language, in a nonchalant comment, a few words buried in a long text, or, for politicians, hidden in some jingoistic platitudes to “energize” the voters. The last point being what brings me to write this column. I recently read that Senator John McCain has said that, if elected president, he would create a new government agency to get America’s “message” out to the rest of the world. When I read this I couldn’t help but think of that wonderful quote from T.S. Eloit, “Where is the wisdom that is lost in knowledge?”
Creating an agency to “get America’s message out” is like turning up the volume to tell the same message that has repeatedly offended and, in many cases, turned many
people in foreign lands against the United States. These are facts. This is knowledge we have gained—painfully—over the past decade. They don’t want to hear our message. They want us to hear and respect their message. Respect, dialogue, and collaboration are the great social challenges of this thing we call globalization. People fear that their identity—the identity of their culture—will be lost or diluted by this huge wave of Western dominance. Globalization, to many people in the Middle East and Asia, has come to mean Westernization or, in some cases Americanization.
As an American expatriate—one who loves his native country—and who experiences some of the negative side-effects of the current administration’s “message”, I would suggest to Senator McCain that, if elected, he create a new federal agency that would be responsible for finding ways to better communicate with other cultures, to learn more about their values and their heritage, their fears and their aspirations and to use this knowledge to better inform the American public and to encourage tolerance. In other words, to listen to, learn from, and pay respect to other cultures—our fellow global citizens. Who knows what could happen? Instead of trying to convince the world that America has the best solution to every problem in every country, we might actually come up with some creative, collaborative solutions with our new friends and thought-partners and set an example others will actually want to follow. Now that’s wisdom for the 21st century.
