As a bureaucrat, I am constantly looking for other people to do my work. I say this only half facetiously. Once you get into an office with a name on the door, when you have a door, a huge part of the job is to scope out, interview, hire and train a cadre of good people who will allow you as a manager to make the only two things that count: decisions and money.

So it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to meeting this guy I’ll call Gutman. He had been touted to me as the answer to a problem that I have to solve in the next couple of months. About three weeks ago, the phone rang.

“Good news,” said Niela, the woman in HR who sets up such things. “Gutman is coming in on the 22nd. He’s working his schedule around to make sure he can get here. Lives in Atlanta, you know. But excited about coming up here to talk with you.”

Good, I thought. Guy’s got a nice resume. Seems very qualified. A grown up, too, which is not all-too common these days. You’d be amazed how many guys pop out of business school covered with afterbirth and expect a seven figure deal and a corner office. This fellow has some chops, I thought. Could be the answer. A week later, the phone rang.

“A little wrinkle,” said Niela. “Gutman wants us to pay for his airfare up here. And to put him up for a night, since he won’t be able to make the round trip in one day.”

“That’s reasonable,” I said. But a little tickle announced itself in the back of my stomach. I hate that tickle. It means a part of my perception mechanism that I can’t quite control has slipped into gear. I began to very slightly dread meeting this Gutman. But I said to myself, wait a minute, isn’t that assertiveness that exact kind of thing you’re looking for in a manager? That ability to articulate his needs and get the job done to his benefit? Isn’t that precisely the quality, as obnoxious as it may sometimes be, that differentiates a leader from those who are led?

A week ago or thereabouts, the phone rang again.

“What is it, Niela,” I said.

“Gutman says that since his interview is on a Friday, and he has other appointments in New York, it will be difficult for him to get back to Atlanta before Sunday night. So he’d like us to handle his hotel for the weekend, plus the airfare, you know…” She paused.

“And?” I said. This was beginning to be interesting.

“And he wants us to pay for his wife to accompany him on the trip.”

This was fairly astounding. Was it possible that I had stumbled on a potential CEO? Who wants such people around, even in prototype?

“Cancel Gutman,” I said to Niela. And that’s what we did. This Friday, my calendar looks blessedly clear, except for a couple of benign meetings with my gang.

I still have my little problem that needs to solved, of course. I just haven’t acquired any new ones.

I’ve been in business for about 5,427 dog years and at no time during my career has there ever been a day when somebody wasn’t worried about what some security analyst was writing about us. This factoid stretches over six iterations of four separate companies, with enough corporate permutations to confuse a particle physicist.

“Bob Weasel of Finster-Koolaid says we’re off on our guidance and won’t make our EBITDA for the quarter!” the CFO will write while forwarding the latest analysis from Weasel, who long ago decided to take a negative turn on our stock because it differentiates him from the other analysts and gets him quotes in the Wall Street Journal.

“What are we going to do about it?” people will cry. And of course there’s nothing you can do about it. Weasel has every right to his take. Its can’t be corrected, either, even if he’s wrong, because Weasel’s opinion is based on a deep understanding of the marketplace, our business sector, and the economy.

Ha!

Weasel and his kind are, as I am sure you know, generally found to be employees of banking institutions. Real banks. Investment banks. Naturally, you know, the research side is (relatively recently) well-separated from the side that actually invests in stuff, but still. Who’s going to argue with Finster-Koolaid? It’s a division of Omnivorous Potentate, the largest investment bank in this brane of the cosmos!

A few years ago, the former CEO of a former form of a former corporate entity that morphed into one of my prior corporate entities appeared at a conference of these geniuses. Granted, Bob was a loser. He had bad affect. Still, the company had a lot going for it. But the security analysts didn’t like Bob’s style. So within 30 minutes of the close of his presentation, our stock went down like Eliot Spitzer. 

People went off to Froggies Tavern early that day, I can tell you. Because those guys ruled. And we drooled, for a long time afterwards. Then a new guy came in that people liked, for whatever reason. And our stock went up. Same company. Actually, slightly worse off, if I remember correctly. Go figure.

So now we look around us and the very same guys who were telling us why we sucked hose water, boy, are they drinking from the other side of the tap. All the great intellects who said people should divest this or that, or that such-and-such would never grow, or that management needed a kick in the kiester… they represent firms that are hawking up huge chunks of lung every day!

Where were these Einsteins when their companies were lending more money than they had to sub-prime borrowers? Were they any less shocked than the rest of us when the piper came to call?

In retrospect, who the hell were they to tell anybody what to invest in, or any corporation what they should or should not do? And why is anybody still listening to any of them?

The Wall Street Journal informs us this morning, in a banner headline on Page 1, that voters today will be focusing primarily on the question  of character.

This must be a challenging piece of news for many politicians. You can imagine the briefing meetings:

“Hey,” says the consultant charged with the responsibility of molding the candidate. “It seems that the voters aren’t as interested in our positions on the issues like health care, the war in Iraq or even the economy.”

“No?” says the candidate. “What are they interested in?”

“Character.”

“What does that mean?” the candidate says, shifting nervously in their seat.

“Well, it means you have to have some.”

“What kind are they looking for?”

“It doesn’t matter,” says the consultant, growing somewhat impatient. “Character isn’t something you can triangulate based on polls. It’s something you have independent of other people’s demands. It’s inside you.”

There is a thoughtful silence. ”I’m sure I have some in there someplace,” the candidate says at last. “But you might want to check where I can get a little bit more, just in case.”

The good news for the candidates is that Character, having been absent from much of the business universe in 2007, is at this moment wafting around looking for anybody interested in anyone who wants to spend time with it. 

There are many things that make up Character, but its most attractive features are well known:

• Character is honest, and always does what it has promised to do; 
• Character is simple and straightforward and always means what it says;  
• Character tries never to do things that will hurt people just to make a little bit of money or get a vote;
• Character is loyal to its friends and polite to its adversaries;
• Character has empathy for those less fortunate;
• Character is guided by principles that do not change with the weather or the polls, but is not so stiff-necked as to impose its views on others who are not persuaded;
• Character listens to other people and cares about what they say.

There are other qualities voters are ostensibly looking for today: experience, new ideas, a renunciation of the decades-long pattern of partisan stupidity. But none of them are as important, it appears, as the demonstration of this very precious and elusive entity.

My sense is that right now we can tell very clearly who’s got it and who ain’t.

I like Character and I think you do too. Let’s just hope it doesn’t blow it all today, and  sticks around long enough to determine what happens in November.