I generally try to vote for the presidential candidate who grew up with greater economic hardship. It tends to be a pretty decent predictor of character. (Admittedly, a pool selected for those who did and who rose to become candidates)
You can name-drop all you want. These people have heard it all. But the short answer is, if they can't interface with the rough-and-tumble reality (and day-to-day insanity) of a scrappy political campaign... then no, their technical chops (by themselves) just won't do all that much.
You’re not wrong, I also think carefully about whether candidates show signs of being acutely deranged privacy freaks, sovereign citizens, gold bugs, and a bunch of other modern-day mental illnesses. Sad but that’s how it goes these days. Maybe I should just ask for their HN handles?
Even just a random process might give better results - sometimes.
From THHGTTG:
> To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
I can't recall the psych principle, but people are genuinely more likely to pick the political candidate whose name they simply know, even if they know they're not great, over the candidate they don't know. Then add primacy bias to that, and … well, you get it.
Knowing more people increases the likelihood you'll be brought up, the likelihood you're the first name on people's minds, the default choice when the dust settles.
There is a large factor of chance if you're a marginal candidate. But if you're very bad, there's no chance, and if you're very good, there's a very high chance.
If all your candidates must be squeaky clean, you're probably ruling out some of the most able. The most law-abiding, unquestioningly tax-paying, physically-fit candidate is probably not the person who has the best understanding of and instinct for foreign affairs, the most ability to inspire, cajole, and back-scratchingly motivate Congresspeople to cooperate with important ideas, and the most ability to quickly to make difficult decisions in no-win situations.
But that's exactly the problem. It selects for people who are charismatic and good at playing political games. Rather than people who are good at selecting the best policies.
For the latter, you can get pretty close with this algorithm:
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