I think we need a new criteria for choosing leaders: imagination. If one can’t image a worst-case scenario, one certainly can’t prepare for it. The New York Times of September 3rd let the president tell of his own lack thereof:
“I don’t think anybody can be prepared for the vastness of the destruction,” Mr. Bush told reporters in Biloxi, after walking through streets of crushed cars and the occasional concrete stairway to nowhere. “You can look at a picture, but until you sit on that doorstep of a house that used to be, or stand by the rubble, you just can’t imagine it.”
Whoever we run in 2008 must be capable of great imagination – the ability to envision both a positive future so as to lay out an appropriate course, and the ability to imagine the consequences of some actions, and of not taking other actions. It’s not enough to ask for a brain. We need someone with the ability to exercise it in creative ways towards compassionate ends.
