2008 Presidential Election:  Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates Level of Current and Future Potential Capability

There is much discussion over which presidential candidate is ready to handle the domestic crisis and international challenges our country currently faces.  The late Elliott Jaques (who coined the term mid-life crisis) and Kathryn Cason, President of the Requisite Organization International Institute, developed tools designed to measure the level of work complexity or problem solving complexity in a role and assess the level of current and future potential capability (that is, the degree of complexity a person can effectively handle at the present time and 10, 20, 50+ years into the future.)  Hence, there is a tested methodology that can provide an objective determination of the fitness of our Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates for the role of President of the United States, independent of their political ideology.

The applicability of the Jaques/Cason tool, known as CIP (Complexity of Information Processing) was tested in the political arena and shown to be an important predictor in the election of a United States president. (See Smart Guy Article)

CIP is an individual’s current ability to solve specific problems by constructing an argument(s) for taking actions or considerations of possible solutions at varying levels of work complexity.  This construct is something that can be observed, is tangible, concrete, a characteristic that can assessed and mapped.  (see attached charts).  CIP can be tracked over time, since it matures throughout life in each individual.  Those characteristics often attributed to an individual’s success are in fact observations of that individual’s CIP –i.e. the person that appears to be a “natural leader” or has “vision”.  And it correlates to how far into the future an individual can plan, organize, and execute judgment and discretion to achieve the intended outcome.

Based on the 2008 Presidential and Vice Presidential debates, the 2008 Democratic and Republican Primary Debates, and an Alaska Gubernatorial Debate, the candidates displayed the following levels of capability:

Note:  The research conducted on the candidate’s current and future potential capability for 2008 was conducted by Alison Brause, Kathryn Cason, and Rosemary A. Bova. 

Based on research conducted by Brause, Cason, and Spelman (2005), one would expect that the presidential candidate with the highest CIP, from one of the major political parties, would win the presidential election.  In this election however, both candidates are capable of operating at Stratum VII.  In the event that the two major party candidates are capable of handling work in the same stratum, then one would expect that the candidate with the highest mode (or future potential capability) would win the election.  Our findings indicate that McCain is mode VII and Obama is mode IX.  Therefore, we expect that Obama would win the 2008 election.

Additional Links are in PDF format and require Adobe Acrobat for viewing:

2008 Republican Primary

2008 Democratic Primary