Decisions involve diagnosis, intuition

Dean was asked how he makes decisions. His wife, also a doctor, had once said he approaches decisions like a physician.

"THAT'S FAIR, that's very fair. I mean, she's been with me a long time, and she's a very smart woman, so I'm sure that's exactly how it works. I mean, the two of us are different in that she, oddly enough, proceeds more logically from spot to spot to spot, and I tend to be more intuitive . . . appearing to bypass things, which gets me in a little trouble on the campaign trail because I often shorthand things and don't explain them fully. . . But that doesn't mean the thought doesn't get done. Here's what I do. . . "You line up everybody with their best expertise, get them each to put their most cogent view of the facts on the table, and arrange them in some cogent theory, which leads you to a course of action. Then you've got to deal with a course of action, and that's a whole other set. In other words, you make the diagnosis first. You decide what the problem really is and what the most reasonable explanation is for what's going on. . .

"So you basically put together your best guess about what the problem is, and then you choose an array of options given what you think the problem is, and to do that you have to know what the risks and rewards are of each option. It really is, it's an amazing parallel to medicine, because first you've got to figure out what the problem is, and you hope you're right. And then you've got to figure out what the highest-reward, least-risk option is, and there are some values involved. . .

"There's another aspect to this, and it is confusing and it does cause consternation among people who don't know me. I often think out loud, and in the process of my decision-making I'll probe and think this way and end up over here. And I do that because I'm trying things out as I do it. I'm trying this out, and I want to see what gets pushed back, and I try something else out and see if it gets pushed . . .

"Sometimes I do that in public, which is not always a good thing, at least politically. It's actually very helpful, it's like floating trial balloons."