Honestly, are we reduced to arguing about whether a messy desk will make Obama a bad president? I've worked in a variety of organizations over the years, and I've witnessed just about zero correlation between the neatness of one's office, and one's managerial efficiency. The President has plenty of aides to keep his damn desk neat.
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Is this for real? It was blindingly obvious that Obama's answer was a pure copout. A messy desk? It's a JOKE, peopl! He's dodging a question that could only damage him by using humour to create an appearance of honesty without revealing anything of substance. Anyone who's taking that comment and analyzing it is a moron, period, end.
Anything Hillary doesn't know about losing papers probably isn't worth knowing.
I take it you have not had much interaction with upper management people in Fortune 500 companies.
As a point of fact, if they have one charactoristic in common, it is an obsession with personal organization, at home, at the office, in the car, at the gym. Taking on the personal responsibility for organization has alway been paramount among the success driven; hence the popularity of DayTimers in the recent past and with Blackberrys today.
There might be the rare individual who works productivly while being personally chaotic but that individual is mostly found at lower management levels.
You mean, Ken, that we are run by the anally obsessive? In my experience, such people lack a sense of proportion and are therefore unfitted for the most senior positions.
You'll feel much better if you just quit reading The New Republic Online.
That said, the analysis wasn't so much about whether Obama is disorganized as whether admitting it as his greatest weakness (and the manner in which he did it) was politically astute. It seems clear to me (and to the NRO analysts) that Obama was trying to a) give a different, non-stock answer (almost all politicians answer this question like Edwards did, "my greatest weakness is I care too much") and b) use it as a springboard to attack the President. It was a noble effort, and to an extent it worked; but he kind of flubbed the answer at the beginning so it sounded kind of off-kilter.
Noah,
You did see Hillary and Edwards answers right?
If Obama coped out they took the cop out back and shot him and then buried him in a shallow grave.
Obama's answer was the only one that wasn't a cop-out. He named an actual flaw; Hillary and Edwards both offered up variants of "my big flaw is that I Care Too Much About Ordinary Americans".
The question was no less stupid here than when asked in job interviews. Obama's answer was undoubtedly calculated as well, but calculated in a way to seem fresher and less stupid than the classic "I Care Too Much" answer, by admitting something totally trivial. I'll still give him some credit for doing something different, though, since no politician would ever win by admitting a real flaw.*
*- Though Hillary's "I Care Too Much" answer of "I'm too impatient for Change" scares the crap out of me.
I proudly have a somewhat messy office; however I am organized and can find anything in a moment's notice, and it is not a pigsty.
"Tidying up" is not a revenue-generating activity.
Those with tidy offices don't have enough to do. I can give them some of my responsibilities to keep them busy.
So there!
Yes, the other two were an order of magnitude worse. They were akin to saying in a job interview that your greatest weakness is that you're a perfectionist, the oldest and worst cliche and one almost guaranteed to lose you the position.
Obama's still sucked, but it at least might not have torpedoed a second interview.
I'd have loved it if one or more of the candidates had answered "What a stupid question. They ask that in job interviews and nobody ever answers it honestly, so instead of wasting air time why don't you ask me something real?"