Morris Jr. - Fit for the presidency?: winners, losers, what-ifs, and also-rans

The story of U.S. presidents begins when they take the oath of office. Yet a key part of their lives took place before they reached the pinnacle, when they were candidates. What had they accomplished? What signals were there to suggest their future performance? How impressive were their rsums?

More than almost any other country, the United States has perfected the art of personnel selection. We apply stringent criteria when selecting a leader for a corporation or nonprofit institution: we require a detailed rsum and carefully check personal and professional references, a process known as due diligence; when the candidate comes in for an interview we ask difficult, probing questions. We want complete and accurate information, and we want to be objective and make a decision free of personal bias.

Electing a president is not the same as choosing a CEO , yet in many ways the process is comparable to the sorts of hiring decisions made every day by top managers and boards of directors of companies and nonprofits. It therefore seems reasonable to apply the same degree of discipline and analysis to filling elective offices. In Fit for the Presidency? I examine rsums and perform due diligence for the office of president just as a professional recruiter would do to fill a companys executive position. How does the candidate measure up on key criteria such as integrity and judgment? What in the candidates past suggests his potential success or failure as a president? Is there a good fit between the candidates skills and the needs of the country at the time? Is there anything in his

Important prior positions like governor or secretary of state invite inquiry about what exactly a potential president has accomplished. We once had a presidential candidate with a sterling job history: he had been a state legislator, diplomat, secretary of state, congressman, and senator. Unfortunately he was a man always one step ahead of his rsuman example of the Peter Principle at work. Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from prior bad judgment; this is why experience can be the best teacher. As every executive recruiter knows, one should beware of the star performer who has an unblemished record of success, who has never known failure or disappointment.

In evaluating a candidate for a top position, executive recruiters are careful not to accept prior success at face value but to analyze the types of organizations that have employed him, the reasons for his success, and whether he can translate his success to a different culture and organization. Wendell Willkie, for example, had no political or government experience, but his work as head of an electric utility dealing with regulators and the public qualified him for the presidency because its very similar to what a president does. George Marshall, even though he spent his entire career in the military and had never run for public office, demonstrated superb strategic thinking and personnel management skills worthy of a president.

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In this book I present the rsums of presidential candidates and all the important information known about them at the time they ran. Would you have voted for this person? Did he demonstrate the qualities we should look for in todays candidates?

In choosing candidates to profile, I sought a reasonable balance of insiders and outsiders, Republicans and Democrats, visionaries and doers, liberals and conservatives, candidates well-known and candidates not well-known. No judgment is meant to be implied by the selection. Avoiding any attempt to label the candidate as one extreme or the other, I have endeavored, eschewing all gossip, legends, and opinions, to simply detail facts and professional character references for which we have hard evidence. If the result is to show a candidate in a better or worse light than is commonly perceived, it is not due to any desire to whitewash or smear him but simply to let the evidence speak for itself and let you draw your own conclusions.

Some of these candidates turned out to be giants of the presidency; others are now largely forgotten; and a few probably should have wonour nations loss. Five candidates made it to the White House, and ten did not (a few of whom didnt even make it to the nomination, though they were considered top candidates). My examination of each candidate begins with a brief background and a detailed rsum, followed by an assessment of qualifications and a summary ratingoutstanding, excellent, fair, or poorbased on the key criteria of accomplishments, intangibles, and judgment and a category named Overall that encompasses all the information we have on the man. Each chapter closes with a review of what happened after the election. In almost every case the candidates future performance could have been predicted (Abraham Lincoln being a major exception).