T

he moment has beckoned. It is increasingly clear that all talk about dissecting the qualities of the two presidential and vice-presidential candidates based on their visions and mission statements, platforms and performances in the television debates has evaporated into thin air. None of this is going to be the basis on which voters decide.

The ground is set for emotional fervor. No matter how convenient, the distinction between '€œrational'€ and '€œemotional'€ is rather empty. All decisions involve an emotional stance. If so, the difference in our electoral choices lies in the extent to which our emotional stances are cultivated or uncultivated.

Indeed, if free choice is driven by preference, while choice involves an emotional stance, the issue then lies in the type of emotional predisposition concealed in our preferences. Here the real distinction is not between '€œrational'€ and '€œemotional'€, but between '€œsane'€ and '€œsenseless'€.

How to discern a sane from a senseless electoral choice? Would you base your choice on the superficial make-up of the candidates? Electing Indonesia'€™s president is not choosing a celebrity in a beauty contest. Appearance is easily manufactured. Would you base your choice on bombastic slogans? This is what big-mouthed demagogues and tyrants have always done. And the soundness of platforms? Unscrupulous specialists can easily manipulate them.

Then what? Here are three commonsense criteria that may be of some use in assessing our preferences and choices.

First, there is the paradoxical link between power and leadership. Power does not always lead to true leadership, but leadership requires power. How much desire for power is needed for true leadership? Herein lies the paradox. It has been attested time and again that someone with a pathological and insatiable thirst for power can never become a true and noble leader. This pathologically power-hungry creature may become a ruler or tyrant but never a true leader.

The reason is also plain. True leadership demands a deep-seated personal capacity to be skeptical about power as well as a proper capacity to distance oneself from power. Only this kind of person is blessed with the quality of true leadership, for he or she knows that the throne is only a means to leadership, not the end in itself.

So, even if only at face value, which of the two candidates has less of a pathological thirst for power? In all likelihood, this type of person is much more capable of becoming a true and noble president of Indonesia. Which of the two has more of a pathological fixation and insatiable hunger for power? This type of personality is dangerous; he may have the ability to become a tyrant but not the next president. Voting for the former is the sane choice, while going for the latter is patently senseless.

Second, there is another paradox between extraordinariness and ordinariness. If the presidency of a country is a form of extraordinary leadership, how do we know if someone is capable of assuming it? Simple: the candidate who has been proven faithful in small and ordinary things is also endowed with the capacity to be faithful in big and extraordinary things '€” and vice versa.

It is enough that the scope of responsibility involves the art of governing at a level lower than the presidency. Indeed, whoever has been proven faithful in assuming the leadership of a city or province will also be faithful in being a true leader of the nation.

Which of the candidates has been proven faithful in the noble art of government? And which one has proven himself unfaithful to the point of, say, being sacked. In short, to vote for the candidate who has been proven to be more faithful in the noble art of government is the sane choice, whereas voting for one who has been proven to be unfaithful is patently loony.

Third, the above yardstick is crucial. Why are track records of faithfulness in small matters so important for leadership in bigger ones? The reason is clear-cut. Would you entrust something extraordinary, demanding total dedication, to someone who has been proven to be unfaithful in many ordinary matters? Only a fool would do this.

There is no such thing as a quantum leap in human behavior. We may boast of the prowess of our rational calculation. But research after research reveals that human behavior is for the most part the product of habits. Habit is repeated, making up the whole gamut of day-to-day practices, leadership habits included. They are instinctive actions triggered by long habituation and repetition in ordinary matters.

The implication is plain. One cannot jump from the absence to the presence of leadership habits, let alone at the level of the presidency. That is why only the candidate who has been proven faithful in the noble habits of leadership at the lower level is capable of assuming higher-level leadership with the same nobility of habits. One may boast with bombast and noise that one is capable of assuming the leadership of Indonesia. But we should not trust words alone. Trust the candidate with the proven habits of noble leadership.

Indeed, to vote for the candidate with noble habits of leadership is the sane choice, while voting for the candidate with vicious habits is patently senseless. Choose sanity, and the rest will be added unto us.