An Incapacity for Measured Judgment

The complex larger cultural forces propelling Trump to the presidency, fueling his leadership style, and connecting his strongest supporters to him include ‘a check that has come back marked “insufficient funds” and an anti-intellectual celebration of an incapacity for measured judgment.

Conservative columnist George Will calls Ken Burns’ new documentary on the Vietnam War a “masterpiece.” He begins his review with this statement:

‘Many Americans’ moral vanity is expressed nowadays in their rage to disparage. They are incapable of measured judgments about past politics — about flawed historical figures who were forced by cascading circumstances to make difficult decisions on the basis of imperfect information. So, the nation now needs an example of how to calmly assess episodes fraught with passion and sorrow. An example arrives Sunday night.’

He then suggests we watch The Vietnam War, an 18 hour documentary starting on PBS tonight, because as Will sees it Ken Burns’ documentary is an illustration of ‘measured judgments about past politics’ and ‘flawed figures’ in difficult circumstances.

I plan to watch the Burns documentary.

Will’s observation interests me for another reason as well. As I watch with approval the momentum toward pulling down confederate memorials, and cringe at my president’s white supremacist roots driving him to oppose this trend with hysterical notions like ‘will Thomas Jefferson be next,’ I am struck by Will’s observation that our current wave of incivility in marked by a common incapacity for measured judgment. Perhaps the intersection of riding a culture war wave that elected President Trump and the ‘role model’ impact of a president suggesting that this incapacity be seen as a sign of his leadership.

But, separate from the roots of this incapacity, is the importance of seeing the trend so we might move the needle ever so slightly back toward reasonable disagreements, since these are the foundation for problem solving. An incapacity for measured judgment is the foundation for demagoguery and a threat to democracy.

Will’s review also takes us through the horror that was the Vietnam War and he concludes with this comment from a Lieutenant Marlantes who fought in that war…

‘Weary of hearing the prudence that was so painfully learned in Indochina derided as the “Vietnam syndrome,” Marlantes says (in his Wall Street Journal review of Mark Bowden’s book “Hue 1968”):

“If by Vietnam syndrome we mean the belief that the U.S. should never again engage in (a) military interventions in foreign civil wars without clear objectives and a clear exit strategy, (b) ‘nation building’ in countries about whose history and culture we are ignorant, and (c) sacrificing our children when our lives, way of life, or ‘government of, by, and for the people’ are not directly threatened, then we should never get over Vietnam syndrome. It’s not an illness; it’s a vaccination.”’

So, I pull out these nuggets from Will and my response is two-fold. Thoughtful, thanks. And my recollection of you, George, is that your columns in the past have often been among the worst illustrations of an incapacity for measured judgment. I feel an urge to search the archives and document this, but then I return to the insight, even if he often ignores it himself: when the urge to crush your opponent, exposing him as a hypocrite and demon, becomes the tail wagging the dog that should be our impulse to solve problems…reconsider.

Michael Gerson fails to reconsider in his column today.

He writes a very thoughtful analysis of how Democrats in the Senate appear to be using a religious test to ridicule and oppose a judicial nominee who, by all accounts, is otherwise exceedingly qualified.

I enjoyed the read and appreciate his efforts, but he frames his own analysis around ridiculing these Democratic Senators. Feinstein’s line of questioning is arguably a religious test. Ok. Feinstein is “indifferent to the sordid history of anti-Catholic bias.” Likely an exaggeration, but with an unusually narrow lens perhaps not entirely out of line.

“How about Feinstein’s ignorance of religion itself?” This unhelpful frame starts the final third of his column (where he makes a good point about the dangers of a “thin and sickly sort of pluralism” but ends up enacting precisely that at the same time), which concludes with him calling Feinstein the “grand inquisitor.”

This high-profile demonstration of his incapacity for measured judgment undermines his own (otherwise thoughtful) argument. And as a sliver of our public pedagogy this contributes to both the rise and now the flourishing of Trumpism as an approach to leadership premised on celebrating willfully ignorant, and dangerously unhinged, angry rants as a form of leadership, where an incapacity for measure judgment is mistaken for ‘speaking the truth.’

Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan did reconsider.

He could have ridiculed city council and many would likely have applauded because it was a sordid display. But instead he chose to lead and leadership is a choice, not a status.

So, building on 'reconsider,' and using the mayor's contributions to do so...when we feel the urge to crush an opponent (particularly one whom we see as dangerously wrong-headed), reconsider means to step back and make a choice to become a leader in our own lives and...

“listen first, speak truthfully without accusation, respect dissent and partner with diverse community groups to accomplish shared goals.”

This is one antidote to both episodic failures to exercise judgment as well as larger cultural tendencies toward an incapacity for measured judgment.

James O’Brien reconsidered…noting it is not bad to try not to offend people…in this great response to the charge that ‘this is just political correctness.’ This is a GREAT illustration of a capacity for measured judgment, in the heat of the moment, when the pressure is on.

This six-minute conversation is well worth listening to, because it helps us understand the deeper conflicts we usually skip over in the usual 'PC' claim and counter-claim exercise. And, while O'Brien is brilliant here, the caller also weighs in as a thoughtful contributor worthy of praise (in the end).