Professional education, the curse of the political class

In poll after poll and in primary election results, it is consistently reported that less educated voters are more likely to favor Senator Clinton and that more educated voters are more likely to favor Senator Obama. David Brooks today suggests it's because the two groups live different lives, and shared experiences like Walter Cronkite and public schools are gone. I suggest a different reason for the division. Essentially all high school education and much of college education is so different from the professional education of doctors, lawyers, engineers, MBAs, etc. that the two groups have incompatible approaches to decision-making and accountability.

The non-professionals are likely to make decisions on the basis of learned conventional wisdom that is assumed to be "true" and on behavioral norms, with little effort to identify alternatives and estimate outcomes before deciding. They feel accountable for acting honorably and "doing what's right" as defined in their community. They are likely to assign accountability for bad outcomes to someone else, or to fate, if they believe their behaviors were proper.

In contrast, professionals are taught that there are multiple alternative courses of action in complex situations and to try to achieve optimum outcomes without undue risk using intellectual models that are known to be inexact and perhaps contradictory. Professional education in the United States is now largely in the case method, and you probably cannot get through these schools if you cannot effectively select the relevant principles and tools and apply them effectively to a unique factual situation. They are taught to internalize responsibility for outcomes and they typically do so in their professional lives.

Why Senator Obama recognizes important and complex problems as such and analyzes them and the options in great detail in order to find the optimum solution—and for him to speak clearly about that—hardly needs explanation. He would not have done well at the Harvard Law School, let alone become president of the Law Review, if he had not demonstrated great skill at precisely that. Then he apprenticed at a large business law firm, where he undoubtedly did more of the same. His current style is the natural style for a highly-trained professional.

The interesting question is why Senator Clinton does not talk that way and why, based on her voting and rhetorical record, she seems to think less in that "professional" style. I suggest that she has had the "elitist" professional style beaten out of her in her longer and tougher political career. Senator Clinton is quite capable of professional thinking and communication at a very high level, and in fact practiced it as she designed a new national health plan early in the first Clinton Administration. She seems to have decided, perhaps in part subconsciously, that her "professional" problem-solving and communication style wasn't working for her career.

There are at least four forces tending to beat a professional style out of politicians. First, because the large majority of their constituents don't understand them when they talk in professional problem-solving terms (it may sound "elitist," "wishy-washy," and "wonkish"), there is pressure to express policy positions simply and in terms of behavioral norms and conventional wisdom. Second, legislators may not get much chance to practice a professional style with colleagues for whom the most important question is usually, "Who's for this, and who's against it?" Third, it's hard to advance a career in politics if one carries the baggage of accountability for bad outcomes. Fourth, because compromise is so often required, legislators are seldom able to vote for what any of them would regard as an optimum decision for which they would be willing to be held personally accountable.

Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were derided for being wonkish and spending too much time trying to get their policy details right. Their biggest blunders were political. George W. Bush is famously "incurious" about policy and bases his decisions on what he calls his "gut" (what I would call the behavioral norms he has internalized and the conventional wisdom of the few whose advice he receives). Although he was awarded an MBA, apparently it did not affect his approach to life, and his biggest blunders have been on the policy side.

To the extent any of this analysis works in the real world, I would think Senator McCain will have an edge over Senator Obama with nonprofessional voters. I see in him no taint of professionalism.

Update on Friday, May 16, 2008 at 10:10AM by Skeptic

John Dean has blogged about the elitist charge, which seems to be a negative in voters' perceptions.