Bad Judgment: It’s in No Short Supply by Maria Grant

It never ceases to amaze me how people with PR handlers, strategists, analysts, and advisors at their disposal make such bad judgment calls. Why does this happen? Do they really think that no one will uncover their antics? Let’s review some past and present examples.

Remember when Senator Gary Hart (D-CO) was running for President, and he got caught having an affair with Donna Rice with pictures on a yacht named Monkey Business? Or Senator John Edwards (D-NC), who was a promising presidential candidate until it was discovered that he was having an illicit affair with staffer and videographer Rielle Hunter followed by a love child and intense cover up. And then, of course, there is the President Clinton affair with Monica Lewinsky, a president who now is remembered for comments like, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” or “It depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.”

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie ordered a government shutdown during the height of Hurricane Sandy that closed all state parks and beaches, took a police helicopter to the coast and spent a Sunday soaking up the rays with his family on a pristine stretch of beach that, thanks to his order, he had completely to himself. (I’ll spare you a summary of the Bridgegate debacle.)  

And then there is Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who left Texas with his family to travel to Cancun when millions of his constituents were enduring power outages and freezing temperatures because of a massive winter storm. 

Just last week, when President Joe Biden was photographed asleep on the beach in Rehoboth, the headline read, “Who’s running the country?” 

Recently Donald Trump played Celine Dion’s song My Heart Will Go On without her permission at several of his rallies. It’s a major song from the movie Titanic. Talk about sinking to a new low! (It would take a whole editorial to discuss why Trump’s selecting J.D. Vance as a running mate was a bad judgment call.) 

And then there is former presidential candidate John McCain selecting Sarah Palin (R-AK) as his running mate without any substantive vetting process which contributed to his election loss. 

Think about the now infamous photo of Josh Hawley (R-MO) fist-pumping the insurrectionists on January 6th juxtaposed with the photo of him frantically fleeing the senate chamber. 

President Biden’s son Hunter took his computer with incriminating photos and videos to a computer repair shop. Big mistake.

Lauren Boebert (R-CO) fervently denied fondling her date and vaping during a performance of Beetlejuice until videos showed up proving otherwise. She then confessed to a lapse of judgment. 

Dozens of bad judgment calls could be attributed to Independent Presidential Candidate RFK Jr., but the most egregious one in my book is his decision to get involved in an anti-vax movement in Samoa. Two children had died in Samoa after being given a vaccine (it was later determined that nurses made a critical error in administering them by accidentally including expired muscle relaxants in the dosage). Kennedy hyped up his anti-vax crusade without getting the facts straight. The Samoan prime minister halted all MMR vaccines nationwide. Then the largest measle outbreak in the history of the country occurred, affecting more than 5,000 citizens. It killed 83 people, most of them children. 

Many observers believe that Hillary Clinton’s showed bad judgment by not giving sufficient attention to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio which cost her the presidency. (In her memoir, Hillary disputes this theory.)

So why is bad judgment so pervasive? Experts claim that most people do not do a decent job of thinking through what they are giving up and what they are gaining when they make decisions. We do not properly assess risks and rewards. This happens because we are influenced by emotions of the moment—short term gains—and the “feeling” brain takes over the “thinking” brain. We also overestimate the value of something now and underestimate the repercussions of what could happen later. 

So, how do we get better at making decisions? One idea is to write down the issue and then put the pros and cons on paper. It is much harder to fool yourself that something is a promising idea when you see the cons in black and white. Also, we must be honest about our weaknesses and own up to them—succumbing to attractive people without proper due diligence, consuming unhealthy foods, spending money, taking drugs, etc. And finally, we must plan our lives to compensate for bad decision-making. So, perhaps it means not having junk food in the house, limiting alcohol consumption at parties, or recognizing a proclivity to being flattered when an attractive person pays attention to us and building appropriate red flag mechanisms. 

Sidney Poitier once said, “History passes the final judgment.” Something to think about.

Maria Grant was principal-in-charge of the Federal human capital practice of an international consulting firm. While on the Eastern Shore, she focuses on writing, reading, piano, and nature.