Wednesday, September 5, 2012

My guess as to how good (or bad) the next president will be

Looking at the two leading contenders, Mittens and Bolsharack, I have this evaluation on how good or bad each would be as the next POTUS. I'm trying in my mind to only evaluate each prospectively without holding past sins/virtues against/for them. That doesn't mean without thought to past performance as that is the leading source of thought toward projection. Keep in mind that the categories "Great" and "Awful" are highly selective company among past presidents. In each case I'm assuming the respective candidate wins election. Notice I include a 95% confidence interval around each.

                                                 Probabilities
Category:           for Mittens to be:             for Bolsharack to be:

Great                    5%   (+/- 3%)                  3%   (+/- 1%)

Good                  15%   (+/- 10%)              15%   (+/- 10%)

Middling              50%   (+/- 15%)              35%   (+/- 15%)

Bad                     25%   (+/- 10%)              35%   (+/- 10%)

Awful                  10%   (+/- 5%)                12%   (+/- 5%)

These expectations are valued against how good a U.S. president reasonably should be within the circumstances of the politics of the day. Obviously, the actions of Congress and to a lesser extent geopolitical events play a large role in determining the potential a president can reach and the opportunities to achieve either extreme.

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