The Political Spectrum
When we were growing up, did the spectrum exist? I think if you had asked middle-school me that question I would have said, “Sure, there’s VIBYGOR, the spectrum of white light, right?” But now, I can’t seem to go a day without hearing about, talking about, reading about or extrapolating about the other spectrum. That would be the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that I recently wrote about. It is not so much a new human phenomenon as it is a recently recognized phenomenon. That expression itself was coined by the American Psychiatric Association in 2013. Now, autism as a condition was first recognized to be a spectrum in 1994, and it was first identified as a specific condition in 1943, having been first called out by the autism name itself in 1911. What is clear from this brief history is that this is a case where recognition has led to a focus on it and that has led to a certain refinement in the thinking about and reference to the condition. Scientists acknowledge that modern diagnostic capabilities are a big part of the increasing tendency to see and hear about the condition, but they also suggest that there are both genetic and environmental reasons for its increased presence in our society. If we characterize the condition as Google does as being “problems with social communication and interaction, and restricted or repetitive behaviors or interests” we start to understand why this is more prevalent today than it has been.
The world is getting more complicated and we are all, through things like advances in telecommunications and social media, becoming more required to put our socialization skills on the line for everyone to see and analyze. What that says to me is that modern technology and its human connectivity have put us in BOTH a place of heightened awareness of people’s eccentricities while their very weaknesses in processing and handling those sorts of interactions have actually made them both worse at hiding those characteristics and have actually made them more pronounced or worse than they might otherwise be. That’s a pretty powerful combination of forces and it seems to me that we need to think very carefully about what that means to us as a society, especially when it comes to vocational choices and perhaps electoral choices.
We have all heard the term “bedside manner” in reference to a doctor’s approach to his or her patients. We have all felt it in one way or another. There are certain people that should be brilliant researchers in medicine and never go anywhere near a patient. There are equally, some doctors who have a great deal of empathy and can therefore relate to their patients in a way that actually helps them come to grips with their conditions and helps them perhaps take a better path to treatment and recovery. The threshold of medicine is usually thought to be the vast amount of complex knowledge that must be accumulated and understood to be a good physician. Those people in our undergraduate years that wanted to be pre-med had to study harder and be more capable of learning the complexity of things like organic chemistry to get over the academic bar and to get the grades needed to gain admission to one of the nation’s medical schools (though some who failed that test would then go to a lesser nation’s medical school and try to re-enter the American medical system through one of the back doors). I recall a college friend who spent four years laser focused on getting the grades to get into medical school and did so to the exclusion of many socializing benefits of his college years. He got over the academic bar and got 40+ interviews at medical schools (a prodigious number that indicated a high chance of success), but then failed to gain admission presumably on his lack of strong interpersonal skills in the interviews. Those schools must have had some filter of sorts that addressed the intangible “bedside manner” concern that told them he lacked a necessary interactive skill to be a good physician.
I currently have a female Asian primary care physician who I have spoken about not having any “bedside manner”. I told her after several visits where I had been consistently losing weight that if she is going to diagnose someone as “morbidly obese” (a designation I have long since accustomed myself to wearing), she should say something positive to them when they lose weight. She blinked and recognized the correctness of my observation and awkwardly blurted out, “Good job!” The next several times I visited, she remembered my admonition and whenever she saw me she would look at my chart and then look up at me and say something like, “You are doing a good job of improving your weight.” In other words, she was smart enough to know what she should do once I pointed it out and she was smart enough to remember it from one visit to the next, but she was not intuitive or what we tend to call emotionally intelligent enough to handle the interaction in a convincing and truly reinforcing manner. In her case, it is a small failing that does not impact my confidence in her medical or diagnostic capabilities, but a more empathetic primary care physician would be better at her job than she is. I suspect if I was deciding between taking chemotherapy or not, her manner might be more important in the equation.
What has raised this issue in my consciousness today is the reporting I just read about the Camp David summit that Joe Biden has just had with the leaders of Japan and South Korea. This is being heralded as a momentous breakthrough in our Asian partnerships. Those two countries are Asian Tigers of great significance in our growing standoff (or perhaps stand-firm) with China, and by extension, Russia, and getting the two to overcome their negative history from the last century (where Japan brutally occupied South Korea for many years prior to WWII) was quite critical to the success of the meeting. That would be my queue to remind you that Joe Biden, for all of his advancing years, has a long history of strong foreign relations capabilities and has a high degree of empathy and emotional intelligence that has meaningful diplomatic value in reestablishing strong alliances (just as he has done for us in NATO and elsewhere). Now, some may question the value of such alliances, but the common and overwhelming consensus by experts in foreign affairs is that they are essential for sustainable peace…and peace is a good thing. An interesting article today mentioned that the meetings needed to address what is being called the Trump Factor, which means the possibility that Trump might re-ascend to the presidency and undermine the long-term requirements of such a strategic partnership. Wow! The Trump Factor. Its not enough that Biden has to pull two ends of a difficult rope together, he also has to work to defeat the specter of a possible returning Trump, who is completely devoid of emotional intelligence and empathy that is so needed in diplomatic dealings.
And then I remembered the article I read yesterday about Ron DeSantis and the awkwardness that he continues to exhibit on the campaign trail. Some people are saying they can relate to his inability to recognize and deal with complex social interaction situations. And then it struck me. Ron DeSantis is on the spectrum, in fact, pretty far out along the spectrum from what my untrained eye can tell. In fact, people often say that he is not as interpersonally adept and relatable as Donald Trump. Double wow! I have now decided that we need to consider using the spectrum as our most important guide to political ranking. When you think about it, leadership, especially on the scale of the American presidency, absolutely requires the emotional intelligence to handle the complexities of ground-level and societal-level awareness and intuitiveness. It may be the number one requirement of a sound president. I wonder if we could have a threshold test for candidates that could measure where they are on the spectrum (like we do for other requirements to be on the debate stage). Without that passing grade, maybe they are better off back in some political research lab or think tank (or in the reality TV business), but keep them out of the Oval Office for Christ’s sake.