What do you look for in a President?

Whether you're deciding who to vote for in a primary or a general election, at some point its important to look at what criteria we use to judge someone who is running for office. I'd suggest that for a lot of the general public, they decide based on a "sense" of the candidates. This is usually dependent on a narrative created in the media about the major contenders. At its worst, during the 2000 election at a time of seeming peace and prosperity, there was way too much talk about the candidate you'd like to have a beer with - and then came 9/11.

On the other hand, those of us who are political junkies rely very heavily on a politician's stated policy prescriptions and goals. While not necessarily a bad thing, this can pose a problem in primaries when the differences are sometimes pretty small. The other problem with it is that it dismisses what I think is an important part of the process...a candidate's decision-making style and temperament.

All of this was brought home again for me as we hear the stories on how President Obama went about making the decision to go after Osama Bin Laden. As I wrote about yesterday in contrasting his style to Bush's, this can be of critical importance once someone is in office. Not all decisions are forecast during a campaign in policy papers. And so it becomes important to know what we can about how a president will go about responding and making decisions.

Timothy Egan takes up that question in a column yesterday.

Turns out, having a community organizer in the White House Situation Room was not a bad thing. Perhaps better than a senator who was afraid to offend an ally. And surely better than a governor who couldn’t even finish her one job with actual responsibilities. Among other things, the most critical 40 minutes of the Obama presidency prove a point backed by history: judgment and temperament are far more important than a résumé.

His take is to contrast the candidate's resume and background with that of judgment and temperament...something that has been used against a "naive and inexperienced Obama" since the primaries (ie, 3 am phone call ad by Clinton).

But over the last couple of weeks, we've seen how President Obama's judgement and temperament have aced his opponents resumes and backgrounds - as well as their policy positions. While gauging the former can be difficult in all the campaign spin, I think its still important to mark this moment and remember it next time we're asked to judge a candidate for office.

To flesh that out a bit, here are two examples of moments that spoke volumes to me about Obama during the 2008 primaries.