Foster Harmony - The Most Harmonious Candidate

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The “harmony” from which Distilled Harmony takes its name has its roots in science, physics, philosophy and theology. Searching this site for “harmony” will send you wandering down myriad paths through each of those heritages.  But for our current purpose - how can Distilled Harmony guide us in the voting booth - I will try to stay more focused.  The first, and preeminent, tenet of Distilled Harmony is Foster Harmony.  At the risk of sounding like a beauty pageant contestant, this tenet calls upon us to do whatever we can to ensure "world peace" - from the personal level of harmony in our own home, to harmony in the global community of which we are all a part.  But unlike the stereotypical pageant contestant, the tenet asks that we actually take steps to “foster harmony.” And holding any candidate for public office, certainly the highest in the land, to a commitment to foster universal harmony is certainly a good place to start.

I have been a member of the same academic department for almost 40 years. As such I have been part of dozens of faculty “search committees.”  These are fascinating exercises. The candidates craft letters of application, often wonderfully designed works of semi-fiction, to present themselves in what they hope is the very best light light given the often “big net” qualifications we often include in the announcement of the position. The selection committee then tiptoes around personal and professional preferences to come up with a short list of candidates to bring to campus for an interview.

It is only in the rearview mirror that I have come to see how important those interviews can be.  At 40 years, my professional affiliation with my colleagues far exceeds the length of many marriages. By hiring a colleague, we are inviting an individual who we often know only through their self-affirming narrative and letters of reference provided by - one assumes - supportive colleagues in the discipline, to share perhaps the rest of our professional, and often personal, life. It is a very, very important decision. And while our "marriage" to our President is limited to, at most, 8 years, it is - in the big picture - more important than hiring a colleague. Nonetheless, we might gain some insight by applying some “interview assessment issues” to the huge “interview” that is a political campaign.

Like a letter of application and supporting letters of reference, a political campaign is the candidate’s charm offensive, their attempt to appear wonderful in our eyes.  Attempting to separate fact from fiction in these beauty pageants is becoming more difficult in the digital age. There is no letterhead on the electronic "letters of reference" that flood the Internet. It is quite difficult to “source” support or detraction by individual, political party, or even nation. My suggestion is to watch how the candidate acts when they think nobody is looking.

We always take our invited interviewees out to a series of meals. Some rather casual lunches, other more formal dinners with the search committee that will make the final recommendation on hiring.  In these situations I made it a point to carefully observe how the candidate treated the wait staff. Most candidates are savvy enough to keep their game face on over meals with those who may hire them, but the way they treat the wait staff, who have no power in the hiring process, is sometimes revealing.  A candidate can affirm, and even research and publish works that advocate a compassionate and harmonious worldview. But that same candidate can be short and demeaning to those who bring the food, pour the wine and fill the water glasses.  These contradictions tend to be warning signs that there is a problematic disconnect between the public mask and the private person behind the mask. They also tend to reveal candidates with whom I would not risk spending decades. 

A political campaign is a closely related species. A political candidate will always say what they believe the voters want to hear, attempting to juggle messages to their “base” which tends to cling to the most extreme positions of the party, and the hyper-valuable “undecided voters” whose adherence to party orthodoxy is mercurial at best. The candidate's speeches and media campaigns will attempt to tout that strangely bifurcated worldview. It is our job to ascertain to what extent the candidate's actions - in current or previous political offices or the private sector - match their words, their commercials, their formal speeches, press conferences, informal comments, tweets, etc.  It is those specific actions, legislative history, executive actions, business practices and personal behavior, that are the political parallels to “how they treat the wait staff.”

Foster harmony asks us to look at each candidate in terms of how his or her “treatment of the wait staff” reflects or predicts an individual who sees the world through gentle, harmonious, and compassionate eyes; reveals a candidate who, when in office, will seek a genuinely harmonious relationship with their fellow office holders, our fellow citizens, and the community of nations with whom we share this fragile globe.  

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