Choosing the president has little to do with qualifications.  The vast majority of the electorate (informed or uninformed, intelligent or dumb, educated or not, rich or poor) has little sense of what the president does, let alone what would make one person more qualified for that job than some other person.   Instead it’s all about which candidate can set the more favorable context and who can frame the decision voters face.

I have my own personal biases as to what I think the president ought to do, but I can’t be sure.  Watching West Wing and living in DC doesn’t make me qualified to judge.  Now there are certain well documented decisions the president makes that have long-term consequences.  These include selecting the senior leadership of government agencies, nominating judges, negotiating agreements with other countries, and acting as the commander in chief.  But few of us know much about any of this. 

Electioneering then is only marginally related to the candidates qualifications.  Instead it’s an old fashioned war of cognitive biases.  The first one is simple: choose your battlefield — frame the decision.  The candidate who can define the issues of the election to his/her advantage has an enormous advantage.  This is where money comes in.  The money allows a candidate to build a machine of influencers in two ways:  you engage the influencers in the media (talking heads, journalists, show hosts) by sending out messages that are easy to digest and it allows you to engage a community of supporters that are out there angling for money every which way.  A person who pays money to a campaign not only helps keep the machine going, but is also much more likely to try to engage someone else to vote for the candidate.

The second cognitive bias is the mere recognition bias.  We like what we know, even when we don’t know what we like.  So a candidate that is recognized by the electorate — even if that recognition is only vaguely positive – is more likely to be elected.   So getting out early and establishing a positive context with the candidates name and image is critical in national races. 

Now as any old election hand knows, national races are not won only by appealing to the base of one’s own party.  They are won just as much by depressing the turnout of the opposing candidates own party, and by appealing to the uncommitted and non-partisan voters.  This brings the money back into the picture: creating a negative context around the opponent.   As the election draws nearer and more undecided voters start to pay attention, the opportunity to influence the candidate’s context is the greatest.  At this point races will usually turn to absolute mud.

Given the preceding analysis, it is obvious why John McCain’s ill received Paris Hilton/Britney Spears ad was sheer election influencing genius.  At this early point in the race the facts are irrelevant.  Prior to Barack Obama’s world tour the bar had been set low by his handlers and he easily cleared it.  To deflate the positive press and throw up sufficient doubt, the McCain camp simply needed to puncture the positive with sustained negative talk.  The point wasn’t to strike out and make a serious point about Obama being on par with Mlles Hilton and Spears — it was only to establish a counterweighing negative conversation around Obama.  And the ads, repeated a million times over and ridiculed by most, didn’t reflect nearly as negatively on McCain (except for some political junkies) as they effectively halted the victory lap of Obama.  Changing the frame of the conversation, and establishing a negative context was the mission — accomplished.

Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina with a flawless blog-entry:  “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Admittedly he loses his blogging style a little as he goes on for about 700 pages explaining his point.

But there’s more to this epanalepsis than witless wit.   Could it be that our choices and decisions fall into a similar logical structure?  Put differently, is it true that “All good decisions are alike; each bad decision bad in it’s own way.”

In the most simplistic sense this is true.  All decisions that help us achieve our goals are good in that they achieve their end — decision that fail, fail for any of a number of reasons, with luck and execution often playing a prominent role.  It seems very dissatisfying, however, to qualify decisions based on their outcomes.  We all have made a good decision, one that we felt was the right one, only to never see the wished for result .  This is because for all non-trivial decisions there is some uncertainty about the outcome.

The true question is if we can describe a universal optimal decision making procedure that would apply for all decisions where the outcome is uncertain.  Ironically, the quality of a decisions cannot be measured by the outcome at all.  Since we do not know the outcome at the point we make a decision, it is outside of the scope of the analysis.  What we rely on instead is the much less concrete notion of ‘expected outcome.’  The sad secret is that people are rather poorer judges of what will actually happen, than they think.  In short, we are overconfident about our ability to predict the future.

So, what is the universal decision making procedure?  I’ll leave that answer for a non-blog dissertation, but instead offer some observations.  Before you make a non-trivial decision you need to know some things.  Below are some of the things that I look at — I don’t always look at them in a particular order, and some I may look at more than once:

• * When is the earliest/last moment I can make this decision? 
• * What would be true of the outcome that I desire?
• * What are the factors that are relevant in that outcome and how important are they?
• * When examining alternative solutions, how will I select among them?
• * What information do I not have that is important to have — who could help me get it?
• * What evidence disconfirms where I’m leaning?
• * Can I reverse this decision once made?
• * What assumptions about the future am I making in my deliberations?
• * Should someone else (e.g., boss or a direct report) be making this decision?
• * Does how I make this decision matter in getting the results that I seek (i.e., do I need to involve other’s to get their buy-in, understanding, assistance)?
• * Is there a legal, ethical, or moral dimension to this decision that I should consider?

This may seem like a lot of steps, but for a small decision I can cycle through them in a few minutes, or even seconds.  For an important decision it may take longer.  These questions are never superfluous, however.  If the decision is important, making explicit (even if only to yourself) your choice, instead of keeping entirely intuitive is valuable.  If you need input from others it is critical.  If you are making a decision outside of your experience/expertise it is the only way you can really properly make the decision.

A fundamental question for business leaders is how much influence rhetoric has on business decisions.  By rhetoric I mean emotional appeals and sophistry, as opposed to presentation of a cogent, fact-based line of thought.  As has been laid out in this blog before, intuition is a very important part of daily decision making.  Powerful as intiution is, however, it is subject to manipulation. 

For example, if two people used exactly the same words to try to convince us of something, we are more likely to ‘believe’ and trust the argument when given by the person we find more appealing.   This was famously illustrated in a FedEx ad some years back.  So, how can one avoid the sirens of corporate stupidity? 

First establish an outcome: What is it that you are trying to accomplish?  What are the parts that influence that outcome.  For example: Outcome: We want to generate 100 new qualified leads this quarter.  What parts are necessary for that?  Part 1: I need contact names.  Part 2: I need to cull through the list and qualify the contacts to those that are most likely to want my stuff.  Part 3: I need to contact the people and see if they are willing to listen to my pitch.  Part 4: I need to validate that they have the money to buy my stuff. 

Second establish possible solutions:  In the example above I might go to the phone book and find contacts at random.  I might go to my personal rolodex.  I might call up friends and ask them for leads.  I might go and buy any of a 100 list of names and call them.  I might go to a conference and find contacts.  I might buy a list and do direct mailings.  I might take out ads in media.  I might run an ‘Internet special’ on my website.  I might hire some people for cold calling.   I may call upon my existing customers.   Bottom line though, you have to look at each alternative and see how well it performs against the parts necessary for the outcome.

Third make sure you understand the alternatives:  Each alternative may or may not be able to meet my outcome.  I will want to know that.  But I also will want to know what each alternative requires me to do.  For example, most of the above alternatives require me to ‘qualify’ the lead with an email or phone call — I have to determine if the lead is for real.  The Internet special if it’s accompanied by a direct ability to buy online might be an exception.  But in general, you cannot make the decision until you understand the alternatives in the context of the outcome.

Fourth make sure you have the resources to implement the alternative(s):  The ‘best’ solution is not always the right solution.  The best solution for you, given your constraints is the way to go.   Getting a mailing list with 10.000 names is not the best solutions if you don’t have the budget to push out 10.000 mailers, or if you don’t have anything to say in the mailers.  Or if you only have home addresses and you are selling  B2B products. 

Here’s a final tip:  You’re already doing most of this.  Either implicitly by trading of alternatives in your mind, or directly by soliciting feedback from different people.  You may even be drawing up a list of criteria, or stating your objectives.  Problem most organizations face:  they don’t know how to pull it all together and make it work.  They don’t know how to collaborate on decision making.  For more on that, visit this shameless plug.

The function that is the title of this post represents the possibility of a wicked infinite regression in American politics: Bush I was in the White House for 12 years (8 as VP). Clinton for 8 years. Bush II has a year left in his 8. Now the cards may well hold a Clinton vs. Bush election. With Mrs. Clinton as a candidate vs. Governor Jeb Bush of Florida as a popular hypothetical choice for vice presidential candidate for the GOP.

So, after 28 years of a Bush or a Clinton in the White House, we may well be in store for an election that will guarantee that number to move to 32. To put that into perspective, think that no one entering the workforce since 1998 (when people born in 1980 turned 18) has ever experienced IN THEIR LIFE a White House without a Clinton or Bush — and that this may be true until 2012 — a span of 14 years.

Ignoring the particular people involved, it seems intuitively obvious that during this time there were other people equally or better qualified in the USA to fill these jobs, whose names were not Clinton or Bush. So how did it happen that the collective judgment of 300 million people resulted in these choices?

In addition to the tragically poor process for selecting the candidates in the first place (see: How not to Choose A Presidential Candidate), there are some psychological biases that helped America along. The first is the mere exposure effect. Basically, it has been shown that we are more likely to like job candidates that we have had prior exposure to — even if that exposure had nothing to do with the person’s fitness for the job.

A second bias is the anchoring effect. Basically, by suggesting a particular answer we can influence all subsequent answers to cluster around this initial anchor — having a last name that simply is the same as a name we hear often in the media can thus make someone more likely to win — absolutely regardless of the merits.

There are a number of other biases that can be seen to enhance the likelihood of candidates getting elected whose primary claim to fame is a last name. A more complete list can be found at: List of cognitive biases.

So the question looms large: is the choice of the American president stuck in a wicked infinite regression — will young people today live and die in a country where there is always a president/vice president who is a Bush or a Clinton?

Question: What would you do as the head of a company who’s decades-old product has suddenly seen a significant revival in interest among a whole new generation of users? How would you respond if over a half a million people became actively engaged in playing an online version of your game if it wasn’t you that developed and deployed the game? How would you capitalize on this sudden, exciting trend and convert this unexpected spike in interest into new sales and branding opportunities? C’mon, your dusty old product is hip again!

Here’s the wrong answer: You’d demand that it be shut it down and alienate a significant number of potential customers. It looks like Hasbro’s following through with their demand that Facebook take down Scrabulous, one of the only things keeping me coming back to Facebook. If Hasbro is really out to simply shut down Scrabulous, this is very short-sighted. Does the desire to protect intellectual property trump all business opportunities? Do you protect the brand at all costs and maintain sales status-quo, or embrace the new online paradigms and exploit the opportunities they present?

It appears that Hasbro is letting the lawyers make the decisions. Its hardly a stretch to assume that this “online” revival of Scrabble interest will lead to increased “offline” sales of the game, yet the company is losing goodwill with this new potential customer base by yanking their game. Does Scrabulous represent IP infringement? Without a doubt. But there are better ways Hasbro could proceed.

First, get the lawyers out of the room. We all know what the legal infringements are and the precedent set by allowing it to continue unabated, and we don’t need these issues clouding the real opportunities. Next, keep Scrabulous up and look to assume the rights to the game while continuing to cultivate new fans. I’d even offer the makers of Scrabulous leadership marketing and online game development positions. I can’t imagine a better resume than Scrabulous – they’ve done a hell of a job. Imagine what they might do in revitalizing other games in Hasbro’s portfolio.

Is this going to be a turning point for Hasbro that revitalizes their portfolio of brands in the Internet age, or are they going to hunker down behind a legal wall made of brick and mortar?

UPDATE: Technomarketer has some great advice for how Hasbro should have proceeded (and still can). We agree on getting the lawyers out of the marketing department. Lawyers and marketers rarely mix well.