One of my dreams has been to revitalize Michigan, my home state. It’s not just my dream; many Michiganders have this rosy view of the mighty industrialist past of the Detroit metro area. My view of most American politicians competing across America is that everyone is inexperienced and full of themselves for being smart simply because they won an election. Then, they start governing, and their government fails its people.
What do I mean by experience? I don’t mean that they should be small politicians before going big; America is notorious for electing a random person for President. Since America’s founding, many politicians are lawyers. Their oratory skills from being attorneys, their knowledge of the law being useful to navigate the American political system, and their connections to other lawyers in the space who know other politicians who were lawyers creates a perfect trifecta of to boost someone into politics. Yet their backgrounds are not what I mean by experience.
By experience, I mean their knowledge of society and how they’ve dealt with it in the past. I think Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Mayor Mamdani are quintisential cases of people I believe have experience. Whether they governed well is your subjective opinion, but I found the way that they navigated their elections and their governing styles showcased their knowledge.
For starters, I think the aforementioned politicians are not only decent officials but also masterminds in elections. They probably studied and prepared how to win elections far longer than studying actual history. Obama is a classic example of this with his Chicago story, but many politicians have done what Obama did for centuries at this point. Michigan’s gubernatorial race’s leading Democratic contender is another Ivy League lawyer, not from the Midwest, and was a court clerk before joining Whitmer’s government. Trump has been eyeing the presidency for decades that it became a Simpson’s joke. A Mamdani’s rise to fame seems heavily calculated as he apparently barely did much in his first government position; likely to not cause any trouble and simply to gain connections and build his resume for his mayoral election.
These people are masterminds as elections, but how about governing?
In Trump’s case, his business background gave him perspective on good talent. People call him sexist, yet many of his closest associates are women such as Pam Bondi and Susie Wiles; even if he is sexist, that didn’t stop him from bringing both these women into this cabinet. His first term was a disaster of firings for people not following him. But they were good picks regardless. In both terms, his picks seem ineffective (and crony-like depending on who you dissect), but it’s because of the tasks given to them (like prosecuting cases that should never have even been done; legally though, the DoJ is forcing a discussion and split given SCOTUS’s conservative lineup, so I think it’s also smart).
In Obama’s case, his legal and history background helped him navigate the post-2008-recession recovery. He rallied the populist movement with “Main Street”, not Wall Street, and completely backtracked the moment he became president by bailing out more companies like the Auto Industry, boosted Silicon Valley, and infused the fundamentals of the economy even more than Bush and his Treasury Secretary. Unlike Trump, I think he did not choose great talent for his cabinet. Unlike Trump, Obama was naive when it came to the political situation, and he failed to push many of his favored policies like many benefits in the ACA and tried to do bipartisan deal-making. Him trying to be bipartisan is not America’s style, and I don’t think it ever was.
Mamdani’s case is similar to Obama’s. He’s not a lawyer, but he is knowledgeable; he used his small seat in the NYC government to gain connections to get the backing of the DSA to launch his movement and win his election. Without the DSA, he would’ve never been able to compete. But the one thing I appreciate is his understanding of physical power laws and talent acquisition. Besides his cabinet picks being great, the scale of the pothole filling and snow shoveling projects were met with the correct proportionate scale of workers because these were infrastructure projects. Mamdani’s aware of the scale of people needed to properly complete them. Another way of thinking about it is that the lower the ratio of teacher to students, the better the educational outcome. To have the best education for students, besides the availability of textbooks, the more teachers, the better the educational outcome of children.
All these people came prepared and transformed their governments excellently in the knowledge domain that they put the most effort in. Trump with foreign policy; Obama with economic policy; Mamdani with local governing.
Most of America’s politicians are not this prepared, from Congress to state governors. One of the policies all governors are competing on is attracting business. Michigan is jealous of Ohio because they’ve been able to attract and reach out to many CEOs looking to expand their Midwest manufacturing reach. If Michigan’s goal is to revitalize their economy, then they need to attract talent back. Companies go to wherever there’s talent, hence industry hubs in NYC for finance and consulting, SF for tech, LA for supply chain, etc. Instead, they’re creating tax incentives for large businesses to take advantage of Michigan’s resources without hiring many people. They give back nothing to the state. To attract talent, Michigan needs to create an environment that makes talent feel like Michigan is the place to be. I’ve been told it’s like a cat and mouse game: “how do you attract business if there’s no talent? How do you attract talent if there’s no business”. The right answer is making small businesses easier to create or even using state funds to invest in unprofitable businesses to attract a low number of talent while slowly building an industry up. That, and making attractive cities in the first place. China dominates at this due to the way their politician’s incentivization/promotions are structured. To be honest, Ohio is not doing a great job at building new talent; what they do have is existing, unemployed blue collar manufacturing talent, and many companies don’t need too much tax incentives from Ohio because of the scale of availability of open talent. E.g. FuYao Glass Industries basically employs a whole town because of the auto industry’s exit.
Why are politicians not this prepared? It’s because many of them spend a lot of time preparing for elections. Most politicians in the East like South Korea and China have decades of experience before arising to a high level role like state governor or president. I find that number of intellectuals in the U.S. ensures that the presidency is usually won only by the best prepared, not just election wise but governing wise as well. It also helps that the White House is full of intellectuals, including support roles, vying for any position. But because of the number of states in the U.S. and just the distribution of the U.S. population as well creates a ton of political roles that are unsuitable for most people.