I think the author greatly exaggerates the assumpitions he makes about "programmers", just because you know how to write computer code doesn't mean you will want to spend more money on the space program or be opposed to software patents. Furthermore this list isn't the benefits from a technical person running the country its someone who agrees with his ideology. How about we need a engineer to be running this country so that
* They understand how to break down large problem to small ones
* Are efficient and always looking for ways to make other parts of the system efficient
* Understand the technical issues facing the country
* Knows the value of having, and the benefit of relying on expects in each problem domain
* Knows how to plan and implement solutions to complex problems
* Knows how to map problems across domains to leverage existing knowledge
* Isn't afraid of getting into the details of problems.
Build a computer model for an internet forum, no problem. Build a computer model for a military and economic superpower with numerous distinct regions within it's massive boarders, diplomatic histories, and all of the personal neuroses of all the people you are going to be trying to get anything done with... well, let's just say being able to actually work with people are the most important thing.
Yep. To be chief executive, one needs to have executive experience in managing large organizations of diverse talent. Except for the last election cycle, the US of A went for about 40 years of electing a president with executive experience (governors mostly, but also some people who had been Vice President, or ran the CIA).
The last cycle was an aberration, in that both major party candidates were legislative politicos (disregarding McCain's officer status in the Air Force), and there was no clear large organization management experience in the field.
I reference people I just don't use the term people. A big part of being an engineer is know that there are others who know more then you about different parts of problems. Hence look for experts in other domains.
I like the sentiment, but wouldn't a lawyer (which our current president and many other, perhaps most, politicians are) also exhibit each of these qualities?
I think the more interesting distinction between engineer and lawyer is that of the engineer being a "maker" versus the lawyer being a "protector" or "enforcer," or something more of that nature.
I actually like Herb ( I named a fish after him ). I think he was handed a poor hand when he came into office ( unless you think his 8 months in office is what triggered the Great Depression ) and he did the best he could to get out of it. He was a republican who not only raised taxes, but laid the groundwork for recovery under FDR. He was so good BTW that he was brought back into Washington after he was voted out to help run things. Like I said we need more engineers running the country
I'm not much of a fan of Hoover. Mainly because of his handling of the crash and how he should have know better. Calvin Coolidge kept taxes low and held spending which had a positive effect on the economy. Hoover was his Commerce Secretary and did the exact opposite as President. He got bad results and a broken economy. FDR didn't recover the economy, he was dead and Truman was President when the economy recovered. Some would even give credit to the Congress of the time for cutting taxes and removing price controls.
Calvin Coolidge remarked on Hoover "for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice—all of it bad.".
Well, I understand he didn't knew about the Keynesian macroeconomic framework, or was understandably suspicious of it's validity, as new as it was. Microeconomic theory just couldn't model an event such as the Great Depression, at the time. And even FDR, who had the correct framework, had a very unlikely event happen to the world that relieved the economic pressure of the depression. Wouldn't find blame on him for that.
Cause and effect are difficult to figure out, though we have the benefit of lots of hindsight. When you get into a problem so crazy and horrible, you sometimes have to experiment a bit to figure out how to fix things (aka "doing something"), and some of these experiments will invariably go backwards. Hoover's problem was probably he underestimated and misidentified the causes of the crash. Roosevelt experimented a lot also, and had just as many failures as successes, but he was like General Grant during the Civil War who wasn't afraid to loose troops in order to win.
You are aware he was only in office for a few months before the stock market crashed ? If you think it was his fault then I don't think I can convince you otherwise, however If you also feel that the problems we had in the late 20's could be fixed in a few years then also good luck with that. There is a reason why it took decades for the stock market to rebound after the crash and a World War to kick industrial America back into gear.
In defense of Herbert Hoover, he wasn't a terrible president. The chaos caused by market speculation was out of his control. It's always possible to point out something that someone could have done differently in hindsight. More than anything, he was made into a scapegoat for problems that were caused by others.
As an engineer president, Hoover did a decent job. I don't think that a stock market crash is any proof that engineers don't make good politicians.
When casting programmers in such roles, it is necessary to gain a balance of perspectives. I recommend the book "logic of failure" by Dietrich Dorner for such a perspective. In that book, he presents simulation based studies on the psychology of dealing with systems with many interconnected parts and details how normally "smart" people who can "break down problems and solve them" fail in consistent ways while others succeed. In the studied cases, "failure" is leading a community of nomads into famine and "success" turned out to be a very gradual improvement in their condition. In particular, he points out the dangers of standard heuristics like "one thing at a time" when dealing with such interconnected systems. IIRC, he concludes that our "standard" reductionist heuristics may not work in the areas of administration and public policy.
This is what I thought (and wished) the article would be about. I think a software developer would make a good president in that we understand how to structure different "modules" to get to an overall end goal or solve a problem.
I suppose there's a lot more involved with being a president, but if one didn't have to deal with all of the politics I would feel very comfortable having a software engineer as president.
