Below you’ll find a series of Tweets about the presidency and how it links with portions of my book, The Hardest Job in the World.
With a primary underway, it would make sense to think about the job these candidates are asking to be hired for and the attributes necessary to do that job.
Buy the book, sure, but if you’d like a taste of its arguments and approach, first, you can find it in the below thread which is a collection of posts over the last years tying portions of the book to current events:
https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01h6m21178nbsqk7114zqhg77e
That link should take you to a series of Twitter posts as a public Readwise page. I published it that way because Twitter can be cumbersome.
Please let me know at dickersonreader@gmail.com if the link does not work.
I’ve long believed that there should be an open book portion of the presidential debate process where candidates can work and polish their answers to certain questions. Here are five questions I’ve come up with after lunch this afternoon that I would put on that open-book test:
- How would you handle a significant, unexpected crisis, such as a global pandemic or a major natural disaster? Please give 5 action items and why you chose those to be your first five moves.
- Can you provide a specific example from your experience where you had to make a difficult decision under pressure, and what was the outcome? How does this experience equip you to make high-stakes decisions in the Oval Office?
- How will you promote unity and foster bipartisanship? Can you share any examples where you have bridged the political gap and what tangible strategies you will employ for bridging political divides in Washington and the nation?
- Economically, what are your specific plans for increasing growth for the next four years and the next twenty. How much of a challenge are the issues of income inequality and climate change, and, given your answer, in what specific way will the policies you promote address those issues?
- Kennedy said (I’m paraphrasing), “domestic policy can lose us an election. Foreign policy can get us killed.” A great deal of your time will be spent tending national security issues. Your biggest decisions will probably be centered there. How do you see the world, how would you approach building relationships with other nations, what are America’s vital interests? What principles will guide your foreign policy approach on those matters and is human rights a vital U.S. interest?
I’ve worked on four US Presidential elections and over 30 international Heads of State elections. I always ask three questions. The first stumped Al Gore and Hillary Clinton
1) Why do you want to be President
2) What have you done that makes you think you will be a good President
3) What will you do once you become President
From this you can get their narrative and the basics of their message