Why Prosecutors Make Horrible Presidents
Conservative presidential candidate Yoon Seok-yeol has proven during the campaign that he hasn't done his homework on his policies. He has verbal gaffes indicative of backwards thinking prejudice. His own wife calls him the woman in the relationship even though he wants to obliterate the Ministry of Family and Gender Equality. But does his background as a prosecutor actually handicap him from being an effective president? My take? Yes, absolutely.
A prosecutor hones in on one target who is seen as an enemy of the people who needs to be given the appropriate punishment. But he probably didn't have to do the chore of finding whom to blame. The case was probably assigned to him. Plus, it probably came with all the evidence prepared by police investigators like a cook-at-home meal kit.
Yoon's main performance metric as a prosecutor was securing the appropriate punishment and treating his target like the enemy. A true president does not pit citizen against citizen. And he does not try to destroy one group (which we've seen him do on the campaign trail) to satisfy his client (main voter base). Rather, a president unites the country and works for win-win solutions that benefit as much of the public as possible. He's not wired that way. He's too much of a 'prosecutor'. And at his age and composition, he won't change.
Why would you want to bring in someone who hardly knows how to grow the economy nor unite the Korean people in social harmony? And with as much as he drinks, along with inevitably getting drunk on power once in the Blue House - a 'prosecutor' slides into 'dictator' mighty quickly.
