Seeing What We Expect

I was interested in watching the reactions to the debate the other night. No, I didn’t watch it, so I’m not going to give any opinion about who won or lost, or who was right.

But in the blogs to which I subscribe I found two posts that were very interesting to me. The questions involve just which candidate is more “presidential.” Of such very subjective judgments many votes are crafted. A president might be chosen because too many people didn’t like how many times he looked at his opponent in a debate, or his use of a first name.

The first reaction was from Brian McLaren. Not too surprisingly he found that Obama’s performance was more presidential.

The second was from C. Michael Patton. Quite unsurprisingly he thought McCain was the most presidential.

Go read them both. I have no idea what set of mannerisms would indicate that someone was truly presidential. I’ve never made a voting decision on that basis. I think leadership can come in many styles, and in some cases a good leader might be a lousy debater or speaker. Each thing is a factor, but I have a hard time figuring out just what would constitute “presidential” behavior.

Both of the men to whom I linked are intelligent Christian leaders and are good writers. I really enjoy both of their writing on religion and politics, though I obviously disagree with each on a number of items. It seems to me that they interpreted the mannerisms of the candidate that they already favored positively, and those of the other man negatively.

I’ve noticed this tendency in reporting. It’s one of the reasons I’ve started limiting my reading to FactCheck.org and PolitiFact on anything that’s about campaign politics, in which I include ads, claims, counter-claims and so forth, rather than substantive policy discussion. So much material on all sides simply appears to me to amount to putting the best construction possible on things said by your own side and the best worst [see comments] possible construction on things said by the other.

I don’t think it’s possible to shed bias completely, but I think we ought to ask ourselves just what we would think of the same actions or the same words if they were spoken by our own favored candidate.