On Super Tuesday, what does the future need from us?
Tomorrow is Super Tuesday.
With 14 states and one U.S. territory holding primaries and 1,357 delegates at stake, this is an inflection point in the 2020 election process.
For months we’ve listened, watched, and calculated electability — and now, midstream — we need to stop and ask a different question. The coronavirus, one the most urgent global crises we’ve faced in recent history, demands our voting attention.
COVID-19 begs us to reframe the question from who should win to — what does the future require of our next leader? What are the leadership qualities best suited to handle the many consequential or unexpected threats that may define the context in which our next president will have to lead?
By this point, all the candidates have honed their stump speeches and campaign pitches. But the future doesn’t care about promises, polls, or partisan positions — it’s fast moving, complex, and globally interconnected.
For the last few months at the Stanford d.school we’ve been developing an immersive learning experience that combines principles of futures thinking, which imagine different possible and plausible futures, and design thinking, which examines the needs of people in those futures. Our goal is to arm all voters with a greater sense of agency and more informed, reflective and expansive ways of flexing their power to shape our shared future.
We don’t simply ask “What would you do if elected President?” Instead, we explore: “Imagine this future has happened. How would you, the President, respond? How would you steward this country — not just for yourself or your party, but for everyone?”
This is not an abstract exercise. Rather, we create plausible, evidenced-backed futures to rehearse the future and the necessary leadership skills required — prototyping what will be needed before it becomes a reality.
One of the first scenarios we created last fall, months before Covid-19, was a pandemic of a flu-like virus that originated in China. In it, we described a future in which:
Who knew that would be so prescient?
But a pandemic — real or potential — isn’t the only future crisis to await us. The next four years we could imagine multiple city devastation from climate change, massive civil uprising, damage to major city’s water infrastructure, undeniable evidence of a sophisticated foreign hacking effort that compromised our election, among many others.
In these precarious moments, what qualities will be called upon to protect all Americans and steward of the foundational values of our democracy?
We can’t predict the future, but the future doesn’t have to be a surprise. Possible scenarios in which our future president will have to lead are in plain sight, if we’re willing to see them. Our vote on Tuesday and in the coming months decides who will be at the helm if and when those futures unfold.
As Stewart Brand, futurist, author, and founder of the Long Now Foundation, reminds us, “We can see the past, but we cannot shape it. We cannot see the future, but we can shape it.”
We don’t need to let the future — or this election — happen to us.
Special thanks to Nancy Murphy and Benjamin Roy for their contributions and help in shaping this important effort and article.