Choosing between Candidates: Personality or Policy?

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October 9, 2016

Choosing between Candidates: Personality or Policy?

By Steve Feinstein

When choosing between candidates, it’s often difficult -- if not impossible -- for people to distinguish between a candidate’s personality, “feel” and aura on the one hand and those candidates’ actual policy stances and governing philosophy on the other hand.

 

Some people will say -- not without at least some justification -- that an individual’s emotional makeup and reactive tendencies will influence their governing approach. Their thought is that the two are inextricably intertwined. Defensive, thin-skinned, secretive, deceptive, insulting, deceitful, fraudulent, inauthentic, dishonest, corrupt, unscrupulous, programmed, unethical, devious people are apt to let those traits spill over from one side to the other. The cell membrane separating the two sides tends to be rather porous.

 

But.... it’s not completely porous. There are some basic philosophical governing differences that persist, regardless of the amount and degree of distraction, amusement or outright offense offered by a given individual’s personal shortcomings.

 

What we have to do this year is subtract the clutter from both sides, no matter how important you think the clutter is, even if you think that the clutter is intertwined with the candidates’ approach.