Good Presidents Don’t Get Re-elected?

In response to criticism over stagnating health care reform and setbacks in the senatorial by-election, President Obama recently declared, “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.”

That may go down as one of his famous sayings, but it’s not really saying anything new. The topic of their conversation, “Leaders look to the next generation, politicians look to the next election,” is also something that’s been discussed over and over again.

On closer inspection, however, this statement implies a paradox. Why do mediocre presidents get re-elected over good ones? Why does looking to the next generation necessarily contradict looking to the next election? Either way you look at it, the statement seems to cast doubt on our systems of election and democracy.

There are times when good presidents lose re-elections and “looking to the next election” trumps “looking to the next generation,” but this isn’t an immutable law. We can only say that in a system of democratic election, it’s tough to be a president who looks to the next election while looking to the next generation.

That brings up something else Obama said: “I don’t want to look back on my time here and say to myself all I was interested in was nurturing my own popularity.” This begs the question, “What’s wrong with nurturing one’s popularity if it involves doing the right thing?” Why would that make someone lose an election?

Perhaps what politicians are really worried about is that their efforts to nurture popularity might backfire and end up alienating people, because I believe that in an overall moderate society (like those in the US and Taiwan), good presidents are often re-elected and looking to the next generation shouldn’t have to contradict looking to the next election.

Of course, re-electing good presidents should be one of the goals of any good democracy. If they can’t get re-elected, it could either be because the president isn’t good enough or the people aren’t good at choosing one. Either way, that’s a shame for any democracy!