Barack Obama Shares Tips for A Good Presidency: “Social Media Can Cloud Your Judgment!”

Barack Obama Shares Tips for A Good Presidency: “Social Media Can Cloud Your Judgment!”

Former President Barack Obama attended a Splunk event in San Francisco yesterday (9/18/19) in which he shared, what he calls, the two most important tips for making good presidential decisions. He said:

“Make sure you have a team with a diversity of opinion sitting around you…a president can’t absorb all the information on their own when making a decision, so it’s important to have teams to provide information and context about the problem.”

Barack Obama

He continued:

“Then what you have to do is create a process where you have confidence that whatever data is out there has been sifted and sorted.”

Next, Barack Obama shared that a President should keep their Twitter-fingers to themselves. He said:

“The other thing that’s helpful is not watching TV or reading social media. Those are two things I would advise, if you’re our president, not to do. It creates a lot of noise and clouds your judgment…if you are susceptible to worrying about what are the polls saying or what might this person say about this topic, or you start mistaking the intensity of the passion of a very small subset of people with a broader sense about your country or people who know something about the topic, that will sway your decision-making in an unhealthy way.”

This advice is ironic, considering the current Oval Office resident is known for airing his grievances over social media. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump made headlines when when he called out John Legend’s wife, Chrissy Teigan. See his tweets below.

What are your thoughts on Obama’s advice? Let us know in the comments. 

Written by Miata Shanay