Rhetorical Outbursts

As John Fund describes it today in the Wall Street Journal, the Harriet Miers nomination looks like a classic illustration of the problems with groupthink.

James Surowiecki describes how and why small, homogeneous groups like the President and his closest advisers can make bad decisions when they lack “cognitive diversity,” presume consensus, rely too heavily on individual “experts,” fail to value dissent, value secrecy over sharing information, and overvalue loyalty. For me, The Wisdom of Crowds, was one of those books that is so insightful you just wish you could make everyone read it; his discussion of groupthink is only the tip of the iceberg. Surowieki describes groupthink as the opposite of collective intelligence. It is what occurs when the factors that produce good group decisions–like those that are present in free markets–are missing:

In part because individual judgment is not accurate enough or consistent enough, cognitive diversity is essential to good decision making. The positive case for diversity, as we’ve seen, is that it expands a group’s set of possible solutions and allows the group to conceptualize problems in novel ways. The negative case for diversity is that diversity makes it easier for a group to make decisions based on facts rather than on influence, authority, or group allegiance.

Homogeneous groups, particularly small ones, are often victims of what the psychologist Irving Janis called “groupthink.” After a detailed study of a series of American foreign-policy fiascoes, including the Bay of Pigs invasion and the failure to anticipate Pearl Harbor, Janis argued that when decision makers are too much alike–in worldview and mind-set–they easily fall prey to groupthink. Homogeneous groups become cohesive more easily than diverse groups and as they become more cohesive they also become more dependent on the group, more insulated from outside opinions, and therefore more convinced that the group’s judgement on important issues must be right. These kinds of groups, Janis suggested, share an illusion of invulnerability, a willingness to rationalize away possible counterarguments to the group’s position, and a conviction that dissent is not useful.

Take a look at today’s piece by John Fund and note the elements of groupthink:

The Miers pick had its origin in the selection of John Roberts last July. Ms. Miers was praised for her role in selecting him and the wildly positive reaction. At that point, a senior White House official told the Washington Post that William K. Kelley, the deputy White House counsel who had been appointed to his post only the month before, stepped in. The Post reported that Mr. Kelley “suggested to [White House Chief of Staff] Andy Card that Miers ought to be considered for the next seat that opened.”

To most people’s surprise, that happened with stunning swiftness when Chief Justice William Rehnquist died Sept. 3. Judge Roberts’s nomination was shifted to fill the vacancy for chief justice, thus opening up the seat of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. A quick political consensus developed around the White House that the nominee should be a woman.

Even though several highly regarded female lawyers were on Mr. Bush’s short list, President Bush and Mr. Card discussed the idea of adding Ms. Miers. Mr. Card was enthusiastic about the idea. The New York Times reported that he “then directed Ms. Miers’ deputy . . . to vet her behind her back.”

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Regardless of whether or not the vetting process was complete, it presented impossible conflicts of interest. Consider the position that Mr. Bush and Mr. Card put Mr. Kelley in. He would be a leading candidate to become White House counsel if Ms. Miers was promoted. He had an interest in not going against his earlier recommendation of her for the Supreme Court, or in angering President Bush, Ms. Miers’s close friend. As journalist Jonathan Larsen has pointed out he also might not have wanted to “bring to light negative information that could torpedo her nomination, keeping her in the very job where she would be best positioned to punish Kelley were she to discover his role in vetting her.”

Mr. Lubet, the Northwestern professor, says “all the built-in incentives” of the vetting process were perverse. “In business you make an effort to have disinterested directors who know all the material facts to resolve conflicts of interest,” he told me. “In the Miers pick, the White House was sowing its own minefield.”

“It was a disaster waiting to happen,” says G. Calvin Mackenzie, a professor at Colby College in Maine who specializes in presidential appointments. “You are evaluating a close friend of the president, under pressure to keep it secret even internally and thus limiting the outside advice you get.”

Indeed, even internal advice was shunned. Mr. Card is said to have shouted down objections to Ms. Miers at staff meetings. A senator attending the White House swearing-in of John Roberts four days before the Miers selection was announced was struck by how depressed White House staffers were during discussion of the next nominee. He says their reaction to him could have been characterized as, “Oh brother, you have no idea what’s coming.”

A last minute effort was made to block the choice of Ms. Miers, including the offices of Vice President Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It fell on deaf ears. First Lady Laura Bush, who went to Southern Methodist University at the same time as Ms. Miers, weighed in. On Sunday night, the president dined with Ms. Miers and the first lady to celebrate the nomination of what one presidential aide inartfully praised to me as that of “a female trailblazer who will walk in the footsteps of President Bush.”