The Hypocrisy of Style Over Substance:
A Lesson From the Legal Field to Presidential Politics
A Lesson in Professionalism from a Smooth Operator
As a first-year attorney back in the ‘90s, I was the grunt on a major case against a large entity, working with a managing partner, a senior associate, and a mid-level associate. The senior associate, whom I’ll call Thomas, was close to making partner and was given a third of the case to run. It was the kind of opportunity I dreamed of having one day. Thomas was smooth. He always dressed sharply and talked about the great things he was doing in his cases. I looked up to him with that doe-eyed awe that only newly minted lawyers ever do.
During civil legal proceedings, you face summary judgment, where you must convince a judge that the case should go to trial. The defendant challenged everything in seeking a summary judgment. My duties included responding to lesser motions, conducting legal and evidentiary research, proofreading, and compiling responses into the final documents. Over several weeks, I repeatedly asked Thomas if he needed help with his section; he always declined. As the 4 PM Friday deadline neared, I grew anxious since I hadn’t seen Thomas’s work, nor any indication of effort. Three days before the filing deadline, he dropped his so-called response on my desk as he left for dinner. It was all wrong. Thomas hadn’t even looked up the relevant laws for his section of the case, something you learn to do in the first few weeks of law school and he should have done years earlier when he was first assigned the case. On top of completing our own assignments, we were now faced with writing the brief for 1/3 of the lawsuit within 3 days.
During that time, I barely went home, just to feed the cat, shower, and change clothes. On the filing day, I came into the office on a two hour nap without makeup and without pressing or curling my hair. I am sure I became more disheveled as I frantically ran around the office hallways trying to complete all of my tasks. Thomas, meanwhile, closed his office blinds to avoid seeing the chaos in the hallway. Somehow, we managed to get the 2-foot stack of documents to the courthouse on time. For those of you who don’t know, in the ‘90s, there wasn’t electronic filing of documents in the courthouse. You compiled your stack and gave it to a runner whose job was to defy all traffic laws and sprint through the courthouse to get to the clerk’s window before they closed the office for the day.
It’s Not What You Do But How You Look Doing It
When I delivered Thomas’s copy of the briefs, he reamed me up and down for my disheveled appearance and running around in the hallways, saying it was undignified and career-threatening. The irony: the man who had nearly caused the firm to commit malpractice lectured me on my professionalism. The senior attorney who had caused my sleepless nights and last-minute scramble had the audacity to condemn me for my heroic efforts. It felt unjust that someone who had contributed the most to the mayhem and the least to the team could appear competent merely by confidently projecting competence.
This lesson about appearance over substance repeated itself throughout my career. In American business culture, you can work yourself to a nub and be dinged for acting and looking like you’ve been working yourself to the nub. Meanwhile, those who look good while doing nothing seem to retain their jobs indefinitely. I have often thought this superficiality was a holdover from the days of aristocracy, where the high society appeared to work the least.
I’ve reflected on this issue in the context of certain Democrats’ reactions to President Biden’s debate performance.
The irony: The person who contributed most to the mess appears competent merely by projecting competence.
Our former president’s handling of the pandemic resulted in over a million excess deaths and other public policy failures. His policies primarily benefited the ultra-wealthy. He acts the part of a leader despite a lack of tangible accomplishments. (If you credit him with the stimulus checks, remember he merely put his branding on them while holding up payments to needy families). His proposed policies for his next administration will cause a recession, if not depression, institute nationwide death panels for pregnant women, create a complex of concentration camps, and tear millions of families apart. Yet, his authoritative style places him in contention to be one of the most powerful leaders in the world.
On the other hand, President Biden and his administration have made heroic efforts to stabilize the economy, making it a leading economy coming out of the pandemic. His achievements have been compared to those of Lyndon Johnson. President Biden has also been visiting war zones, commemorating our military, and uniting foreign governments for America’s benefit. Yet, his affect is used against him.
We have an 81-year-old running in an election starting in a few months against someone eager to take us back to 1881 – or even 1681, given his stance on presidential immunity. I’ll take the 81-year-old living in 2024 and building for the future over someone trying to send us back to a period that never really existed. There’s no such time machine. It’s as foolish as chasing a rainbow for a pot of gold.
Measuring By the Content of Their Character
What can we do? When people have little information to go on or no yardstick to use as a measure, they’ll accept appearances. However, with these two candidates, we have a ton of information. If we want a society that judges people on the content of their character and not appearances, let’s start by judging people based on the content of their character. Our former president’s character has been demonstrated as lacking by his own Vice President (whom he didn’t seem to mind potentially being hanged) and in substantial civil and criminal judgments. Should President Biden step down from his nomination, I would argue that almost any other opponent should be able to meet and far exceed the low threshold for character set by our former president.
To voters, I’d caution: our former president has had the luxury of looking good after a four-year vacation. In November, I hope the voters will send a clear message that his vacation is permanent.
~ Karen Spencer
July 2024
