Too Nice To Be President?
If you’re like me, you haven’t given much thought to Andrew Yang. In fact, in all likelihood, that name is only vaguely familiar to many of you reading. He’s one of the aspiring Democratic presidential nominees, possibly most well-known for his anti-circumcision stance. (He’s also a prominent Asian American running for the presidency, which I would argue is more relevant and exciting, but for some reason, people focus on the circumcision thing.) I didn’t bring Yang up to talk about his opinions though. I brought up Yang to talk about people’s opinion of him.
In interviews and reports, Andrew Yang has been accused of being too nice to be president. When asked about this, Yang often laughs, claims he’s had his less than nice moments, and moves the conversation on. We’re going to focus there for a moment though because that’s such a weird thing to bring up as a negative quality.
When people complain about someone being too nice, it seems that they mean one of two things. They are using “nice” to be either “weak” or “suspicious. We’ll get back to the “weak” idea, but the idea of niceness, compassion and kindness as suspicious characteristics is addressed by Dr. Robert Sapolsky in his book “Behave” (which I’ve referenced before).
Sapolsky outlines the neuroscience behind behavior as well as our perception of behavior. The idea is that self-centered behavior is easy to understand because we all know egoistic behavior. When someone behaves selflessly, (when someone is nice), their motivation is not immediately apparent, so our instinct is to treat them with suspicion. We ask ourselves how the other person is benefitting from their kindness.
I don’t think people are calling Andrew Yang nice to imply that he’s suspicious though, I think it’s because they want to depict him as weak. We tend to treat nice, kind people like pushovers, like they are naïve. Despite centuries of traditions promoting kindness and compassion as the desired qualities for leaders, we collectively look at people like Yang and say, “no, not THAT nice.” Except for the times when we don’t.
Thinking back four years, one of the most frequently cited detriments of Hillary Clinton was that she was profoundly unlikable. Secretary Clinton’s detractors routinely asked if we wanted someone leading us who was such a Bulbasaur. (Obviously, I’m using this Pokémon name as a replacement for another “B” word.) There are some sexist motivations behind Secretary Clinton’s low likeability rating as well, but it all came back to asking if she was nice enough to be president.
Every election cycle, some pundit will claim that the most important question the American people have is “would I have a beer with him?” Personally, I find this condescending, mainly because I’m more of a bourbon type, but also because it implies that we the people are only interested in the personality and couldn’t care less about the policies. At the end of the day though, you’re more likely to accept or at least entertain the policies of someone you could see yourself being friends with. I try to pick friends that are nice, maybe even too nice.
I’m probably not going to vote for Andrew Yang. According to most polls, only about 1% of us are. I’d like to think that whoever I end up voting for (Warren or Buttigieg right now) could be described as too nice. Leading through kindness and compassion seem to work for Jacinda Ardern, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, and Superman, so maybe it’s worth a shot. Kindness and compassion haven’t been traits associated with our Federal leadership lately.
