I read Rick Moran’s blog post here at the PJ Tatler asking “How does a President Show Empathy?” Moran expressed concern that a lefty on a blog called Romney “stern and business-like”:
Note that there is no description of Romney being “stern and businesslike.” Karoli pulled that out of a hat. In fact, the conversation comes to us second hand. The woman makes no mention of what else Romney may have said to her, much less his tone or demeanor. As far as “empathy” is concerned, Romney gave the woman the best help he could offer — call a number set up to help people in the disaster. How this translates into a lack of empathy — especially when the full extent of the conversation between the two is unknown — is a mystery.
Clinton was, indeed, a master at public empathizing. His performance at the memorial for those killed in the Oklahoma City bombing was pitch perfect and touchingly real. George W. Bush, on the other hand, braved the wrath — and the gratitude — of the families of the fallen in private. Ronald Reagan’s embrace of one of the Challenger astronaut’s crying children at that memorial service was a heartbreaking moment.
These displays of public and private empathy are important to how we see our president. In private, Romney has shown himself to be a very kind, empathetic man whose charitable works are nearly beyond belief in their scope and impact. A man like that doesn’t automatically become “stern and businesslike” when in public. Romney may be stiff, but he’s not brain dead. I’m sure he showed suitable and appropriate empathy toward the woman, and his suggestion was no doubt heartfelt. He was trying to help — and he did.
The left’s “cold hearted capitalist” meme won’t resonate if the “real” Mitt Romney is revealed.
I guess my question is “how empathetic should a president be?” If a person is too empathetic, that can be a bad thing because it can freeze one’s ability to act, or to act in the most effective manner. Barbara Oakley’s book Pathological Altruism points out that excessive empathy even be destructive:
Pathologies of altruism and empathy not only underlie health issues, but also a disparate slew of humankind’s most troubled features, including genocide, suicide bombing, self-righteous political partisanship, and ineffective philanthropic and social programs that ultimately worsen the situations they are meant to aid.
Why is looking “stern and business-like” such a bad trait? What if Romney has those traits and uses them as President to improve the economy, help put people to work and become less dependent on government? I will take that any day over a falsely “empathetic” leader who uses his empathy either to manipulate people or entice them to become so dependent on a “benevolent” leader that they choose entitlements over self-sufficiency, stagnation over growth and involuntary servitude rather than freedom. How is this empathetic?
Women like “empathetic” politicians: The growth of government explained. See John Lott.
I think you’re asking the wrong question. We should be asking “How should a President show his empathy?”.
Despite what the delusional David Brooks thinks a community is the sum of individuals and individual actions while a gulag is the absence of individuals and individual actions. An empathetic President would follow the Constitution, an empathetic Congress would repeal all but the bare minimum of laws and regulations, and an empathetic Court would, gasp, follow the letter of the law. Those actions would return us to a culture based on the highest common denominator with the best and brightest leading the way. Our path for the last 50+ years has been on a culture based on the lowest common denominator with the worst and dimmest leading the way. If you reward success then you get more success, if you reward failure then you get more failure and crony capitalism is all about rewarding failure.
It’s really a question of which President you want: Do you want a President who will encourage you to be the least that you can be or a President who will encourage you to be the best that you can be? Encouraging you to be the least that you can be is very easy, I just need to make all of your decisions for you and provide for your basic needs. You’ll be a perpetual baby. It’s much more difficult to push you to be the best that you can be. I have to turn a deaf ear to your pleas and tell you “quit whining, get back to work, you know what you need to do”. If I actually do care about you then I don’t need you to like me, I need you to be successful, I need you to be the best that you can be.
Dennis Prager makes a case that the most important values in public life are different from those in private life. He places “truth” as a paramount value in public life and “compassion” as an important value in private life. It is often assumed that compassionate behavior is motivated, at least in part, by empathy — whether or not this is true. One reason that empathy in public life can be destructive is that when government attempts to exercise compassion toward selected people, it hurts other people — generally unseen, vague people (even future generations).
Today’s Left often seems to get these values backward. Truth trumps compassion (and empathy) in private matters: You can read unbelievably humiliating things about peoples’personal relationships revealed in public in the NYT magazines (why I cheat on my husband or why I, a gay man living part-time with a single woman whose child I fathered, feel no parental attachment to the child, etc.)
Compassion (and empathy) trump truth in public matters: The Left yawns at falsification of scientific data and supports active suppression of data which challenges political programs they deem to be important to the common good or to helping people like AIDS patients (post-normal science). Thus, we get “Climategate” and scandals about suppressed data by the Cancer Society, etc. Who remembers the one-time hysteria over an expected epidemic heterosexual AIDS in America which diverted resources from the most frequent victims of the disease? This was based on suppression of available data. The Left refuses to address issues of debt because they feel empathy toward the people right in front of their faces. And they support “social justice” rather than equality before the law because equality before the law may not favor people they believe deserve empathy. But without equality before the law, no one really knows what the law is/ This hurts everybody who wants to see their civilization survive in the long run.
Stern and business like? We all know that there is nothing like cracking a few jokes to ease the mood at a natural disaster site.
“You see, ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to [ be ] yourself.”
Call me crazy, but maybe we need a little less “empathy”.
It’s okay to feel bad that someone has experienced adversity, but the way you bounce back is to wade in, start cleaning up and move forward. Waiting on someone to come tell you what to do or do it for you results in paralysis – and sometimes it’s painful to hear that you need to get up and act in your own best interests.
Our country and economy is in serious paralysis. We need a leader that will challenge Americans to grab a shovel and do what it takes to get things moving again. And will take bold measures to get government barriers out of the way of those who want to take risks on new ideas and innovations.
I see the kernel of a true message for bringing the country back. I think Romney has the opportunity to challenge people to go after the future they want rather than waiting on a handout, whether it’s encouraging students to really evaluate how they will get the education they want or rebuilding after a set back. And it will be a stark contrast to Obama’s message of dependency.
The President should be as empathetic as a physician. In other words, not at all.
The President’s attention should be on the patient’s health, i.e., the nation’s health.
The President cannot let emotions distort protection of that health.
I wouldn’t mind an empathetic president if he empathized with those of us who are distressed by the growth of statism and the corresponding dimunition of individual liberty. I’d like a president who “feels the pain” of Lady Liberty chafing under shackles.
In Scorsese’s two-part documentary of Bob Dylan, No Direction Home, there’s a powerful moment when Dylan was asked about all the people booing him so mercilessly after he went electric. He said that it stopped bothering him because “You can kill someone with kindness, too.”
America could use a president who treated Americans like adults rather than children in need of a government nanny. It’s killing us with kindness.
All I want is a President who will chain down and put a leash on that damn DC regulation factory he runs so guys like me can get our business’s back on a solid footing. Save the loving nancy boy attitude for Oprah thanks.
Is this the time for the President to hold hands with the passengers on the Titanic and tell them how much he feels their pain? Or is it the time for the President to run to the engine room and try to keep the ship from sinking?
One of the criticisms aimed at Bill Clinton when he was president (and after) was that he claimed to “feel our pain”. Given his behavior, Americans were left to wonder if such an “empathetic” president genuinely felt our pain, or was just a fraud who knew what buttons to push for his own benefit. I think Bill Clinton did a lot to make Americans suspicious of politicians who claimed to “understand” or “empathize” with the general citizenship. You can like a politician’s charm, and still not trust him to do right by you.
If Romney is being his own stiff, business-like self with a business-like plan for my future, I think I trust that man more than the politician who claims to know what I’m feeling and “wants to help”.
I want an employee to do her/his job, and show empathy with his/her own money.
People I know are strong and proud. When they are broken down by circumstance, they are ashamed. If I want to help them, the last thing they need is to wallow in victimhood. This would be like the ground opening up beneath their feet.
What they need is to objectify the evil, get their minds together, and overcome it. Stern and businesslike attitudes accomplish this much better than hugs.
Some subcultures are held back by their inability to rise above the shock and grief of ill fortune. No one has ever accused Mitt’s subculture of this failing. Sometimes love just has to be tough. And after that, you’re happy again. We should all try this sometime; it works.
I dont give a hoot about presidential empathy anymore, since it can be completely simulated by good playacting, without actually being present. It goes back to the old saying for great actors and newscasters, “if you can fake sincerity, you have it made”. I want competance, judged by measureable results, which cant be simulated by good acting, or manipulated by media spin. Romney has demonstrated competance, obama demonstrated incompetance.