What actually happens when one of the most technically capable people in a country becomes president?

[u/Proper-Pause2111]

I’ve been looking into Nicușor Dan’s story and I find it pretty interesting as a political case study.

He wasn’t a traditional career politician. He’s a mathematician who founded a civic movement, became mayor of Bucharest, and eventually ran as an independent for president. He won Romania’s 2025 presidential election after defeating George Simion in the second round.

What interests me isn't really whether he's "left" or "right", but whether technical competence actually translates into effective national leadership.

As mayor, he built his reputation around things like infrastructure, municipal finances and administrative reform. But the presidency is obviously a completely different job, especially in Romania's current situation.

And his presidency hasn't exactly been smooth. Romania has gone through major political deadlock, including the collapse of the Bolojan government in May 2026. Dan has since struggled to get a stable parliamentary majority and has had multiple unsuccessful attempts to form a new government. As of September 2026, he has nominated Siegfried Mureșan as PM after two previous attempts failed.

At the same time, there have been things his administration can point to, including the 2026 budget being passed and progress on some EU Recovery and Resilience Plan milestones.

So I'm curious how people here would evaluate the experiment so far:

Does having an exceptionally competent/technocratic person at the top actually make a meaningful difference, or are presidents ultimately constrained by institutions, parliament, political parties and the bureaucracy?

And specifically for Romanians or people following Romanian politics closely: How do you think Nicușor Dan has actually performed so far? What has he done well, what has he handled badly, and how much of the current political mess is realistically within his control?

I'm especially interested in answers from people who followed his Bucharest mayoral years as well, because that seems important for judging whether his reputation for competence translates from local government to national politics.

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[u/kingjoey52a]

One of the problems with electing a non politician is they don’t know how to wheel and deal. He can tell the legislature what needs to be done “because it’s correct” but that doesn’t stop others from responding “that doesn’t work for me, brother.” You gotta know the power brokers, who can bring in a group of votes, who to glad hand with and who to play hardball with.

I don’t know anything about Romania, but this might be why he’s having trouble forming a government. Though he was a mayor so he’s not totally new to politics.

[u/informat7 → u/kingjoey52a]

This is why I think that Biden was such a good politician. As president he had a 50/50 senate and was still able to get a ton of things passed. Very few people would have been able to do the same.

[u/MorganWick → u/kingjoey52a]

Technocrats and nerds know the right thing to do, but tend not to be great at interacting with and persuading other people, and that gets more important at higher levels of government.

[u/DocPsychosis → u/MorganWick]

When it comes to their specific field maybe. Not when it comes to other fields, of which there are many. The world is full of engineers who, because they are good at one thing, think they are extra-smart about everything and embrace some very bad opinions.

[u/meerkatx → u/kingjoey52a]

That's what has hurt the US since the Tea Party made their appearance. Instead of politicians from both sides having lunch, being friends, and coming together so both sides got things it became a "war" where every law or budget is a "battle" and then we added the stupidity of the MAGA crowd to just make our federal government useless.

[u/Can_Haz_Cheezburger → u/meerkatx]

It was before the Tea Party, it was when Newt Gingrich entered Congress and said "no more bipartisanship". If you go back further it's the Two Santas strategy where Republicans refuse to let Democrats implement their agenda because the Democratic economic agenda prior to Bill Clinton was super popular

[u/meerkatx → u/Can_Haz_Cheezburger]

Newt birthed and began the Tea Party.

[u/Sageblue32 → u/meerkatx]

We've been having problems since one politician beat the other with a cane. About when we outlawed them being able to duel.

[u/According_to_Mission → u/kingjoey52a]

I think the combination of technocratic competence and actual political acumen is probably best represented by former central bankers. Carney comes to mind for Canada, and Draghi (albeit less successfully, or better said less durably) for Italy. Not sure if there are any other examples.

[u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk → u/According_to_Mission]

He'd have more opposition, and less political capital, were it not for Trump's big mouth. (He wouldn't even be PM, in fact.). He wouldn't be a bumbling nerd like Kier Starmer, but he wouldn't be this world historical figure either.

[u/Informal_Drawing → u/kingjoey52a]

I can imagine that trying to get anything done when all the people you're trying to work with are corrupt assholes an be quite the challenge. In general terms, I have no idea about Romania specifically.

[u/MorganWick → u/[deleted]]

I think the problem is that our model of democracy was crafted by nerds and technocrats who envisioned people being convinced by the obvious rightness of the facts through reason and logic, and we haven't adjusted it for the reality that most people don't actually think that way. It was supposed to be a government of, by, and for the nerds, but not only have the nerds proven to be ill-suited to actually get elected, they've accidentally provided cover and justification for the psychopaths with all the same cold rationality as the nerds but without any of the investment in society and with the ability to fake the humanity the nerds can't.

[u/Efko-94 → u/MorganWick]

I think that only partial covers it. It's also just different interests, and people can have reasonable differences of opinion. Homeowners might have different interest than renters, employers different than employee's...at least in the short term.

Thinking that a technocrat will do well, because it knows the 'correct' answer or solution is leaving out the fact that politics is often about distributing scarce resources among a large population. Often there is no obvious right answer.

The whole ask 10 economist a question and get 11 answers.

[u/MorganWick → u/Efko-94]

But then the problem becomes that those different interests have different levels of connection to the politicians and different levels of interpersonal skills. And because our model of democracy is infused with the assumption that technocrats will hand down a Solomonian judgment and we just need to vote for the right ones, or conversely that counting heads will lead to the right outcome, most people not only don't recognize the value of interpersonal skills and forming connections with politicians, but see it as corrupting the dispassionate logic of how the system is supposed to work.

[u/PoliticalDiscussion-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Please do not submit low investment content. This subreddit is for genuine discussion: Memes, links substituting for explanation, sarcasm, political name-calling, and other non-substantive contributions will be removed per moderator discretion.

[u/BananaResearcher]

When you're president you're extremely busy with the work of the presidency. You also have access to all of the experts of any given field. Even if you are the preeminent expert in your particular field, you're just one person. Your technical expertise is diluted tremendously when for any given issue you can ask all of the experts of the field. The marginal utility of your particular technical expertise approaches zero. And again, you don't have time to delve into time-consuming technical problems, because you're president.

I think it's just such a different skillset that being technically proficient doesn't matter much. I often wonder how much being intelligent even matters, honestly.

I'd also add the example of Angela Merkel who is a PhD in Quantum Chemistry, and yet oversaw the complete destruction of Germany's nuclear power. Instead of leading Europe to become energy independent (or at least secure), she oversaw Europe becoming utterly dependent on others and wildly energy insecure.

[u/JDogg126]

The business world is full of cases where the best engineers get promoted to leadership roles only to struggle. Leading people and building capable team is a skill that is needed. The people who lead do not need to be the smartest people in the room. It’s often a terrible situation when they are. In politics you need team builders and coalition builders. People who can facilitate skilled teams and communicate well. Someone who can explain ideas that the team develop.

[u/johnnySix]

Jimmy Carter -us prez from 1976-1980 - was very technical. He was even a nuclear scientist. Lot of good that did him.

[u/BlaxicanXIX]

I mean ultimately once you get above district level politics is more of a coalition builder and networking skill check than anything else. Being really smart and having really good solutions to problems doesn't matter if you can't get other people on board with your ideas, especially in a a democratic system. 

That's always kind of been the issue with meritocracies. Intelligence is not wisdom nor is it in indicator of morality or competency

[u/SimonaRed]

Romanian here. Nicusor Dan is catastrophic. He lacks emotionsl inteligence. I was a voter of him, because  no other option.  He does not have any political skills, he came into presidency based on tbe unheard, until now, event of cancelling the presidential election process with no official reasons than "the russians".

I came to the conclusion that a president must be a politician, not a technical person.

And he didn't do big things as the mair, except improving public parking.

But, seems like we are all being "presided" now by incompetent persons (Trump, Nicusor, Ursula). Only for Carney and surprinsingly, Xi, I do have respect.

[u/TheOvy]

The art of politics is the art of herding cats. It's very difficult, and without a lot of practice, no amount of technical competency will compensate. And even when you have a lot of practice, it's still really fucking difficult to keep cats in a herd. They love to stray.

[u/Funny-Bit-4148]

Current prime minister of Nepal , Balendra shah is structural engineer, politically not connected with traditional parties, and was mayor of Kathmandu. He did good when he was mayor. But when he became prime minister, he is stuck, politicians and civil services from corrupt old system are giving him hard times.

[u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk]

Ever met a brilliant genius scientist who, when it came to presiding over a lecture hall full of 19 year olds, just sucked? Different things require different skillsets.

[u/DanforthWhitcomb_]

Technical SMEs by and large tend to make terrible leaders no matter the context because their skill is in making something happen, not figuring out how to make something happen.

It's why you see things like militaries and corporations have entirely separate career tracks for technical specialists and in the case of most of the military ones their command authority is extremely limited because they are not trained nor are they expected to be leaders because that isn't why they are there.

[u/SafeThrowaway691]

Jimmy Carter fit that category (plus government experience) and got voted out in a landslide.

I’d consider him the best president of the last half century, but I’m clearly in the minority.

[u/markth_wi]

Given the absurd situation when genuinely bad people achieve high office we know what that looks like. Rarely however do certain kinds of people make good political leaders. Sometimes circumstances force people into roles, Thomas Jefferson fits this mold as do a few other leaders in history.

But this is true for any number of people who find themselves President or Prime Minister , and the political landscape if as others have noted what controls the circumstances. Competent leadership is rare, but does exist - but it's not without it's ups and downs.

[u/vasjpan002]

I think academics get it all wrong, they underestimate the value of leadership over knowledge. Reagan and Ike were the best because they lacked ego, pretending to be back seat drivers. BTW, read Gene Kopelson's Dress Rehearsal as to how Ike actually chose and mentored Reagan.

[u/UnfoldedHeart]

Skills don't necessarily translate as you might expect. There's often some form of the Peter Principle going on: you get promoted at jobs you're good at until you get promoted to a job that requires a different skill set and you aren't as good (typically admin-related.)

Like, you can be the best scientist in the lab but if you're promoted to running the lab, you now need a new skill set that you may not have. The job isn't about designing and running experiments anymore, it's about managing the people who are doing that. And you could be brilliant at the actual science part, but terrible at the managing people part.

[u/BusinessWatercrees58]

People leadership/management is a skill in and of itself. Some people are good at it and some people aren't, just like hitting a baseball. It's a mistake to assume that a leader who is very competent in 1 area is very competent in others. We wouldn't assume that Dan is good at hitting a baseball just because of his other abilities. Why should we assume that he, or any person, is good at people management just because they are good at other skills? We shouldn't.

[u/lord999x]

Well, you could luck out with a Lee Hsien Loong who was quite technically capable and ruled Singapore with an authoritarian hand which kept the country prosperous (Nothing negative but Singapore values security and stability over freedom).

You could get an Angela Merkel who was politically a grey rock yet managed to keep a ruling coalition together and effectively manage Germany.

You could get a guy like Macron where France just sucks.

Having technocratic credentials brings a different but not necessarily superior perspective.  I just wish in the US that the gerontocracy wasn't so predominant among voters and the elected.

[u/boringexplanation]

The CPC, regardless of what you think about their philosophy, is very technocratic in all the infrastructure building. Large portions of the assembly have an engineering or science background.

[u/TraditionalRace3110]

Nothing? Germany was run into the ground by PhDs.

In my country of origin, we had super duber talented engineers as prime ministers. They just followed the "extereme center" of the time, as the electrol and economic system that reproduce them only enable a certain type of politics.

Have you seen the economic advisors in the last 50 years? They'd at least have PhDs. Neoliberalism is built and maintained by very smart but cunning people (Hayek, Milton etc).

Judicial system is another example. Judges in westeren countries in high position of power tend to be very technically skilled. Still, the application and interpretation of law is still unjust and flawed.

Webberian bureaucracies make you think we are run by meritocracy, while disguising the fact that if you only allow certain problems and certain tools to solve them, it doesn't really matter if you have the best mathematicians working on them. If State's first responsibility is to protect the landlords, there ain't not enough smartness in the world to provide affordable housing for everybody.

Adding i to all of that, highly skilled people rarely side with the actual working people in the time of crisis. They have a certain privileges under a capitalist system, which they perceive will be lost if the economic system changes.

[u/PennStateInMD]

Jimmy Carter seems about as technically competent as any President we've had and I posit he was thwarted by monied interests and a series of unfortunate world events.

[u/Anti17]

I'd say yes if considered through the lens of Mark Carney's performance in Canada. Highly popular at home and abroad... Minus the US

[u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk → u/Anti17]

He'd be having more difficulty, and would have less political capital, were it not for Trump's antics.

[u/Anti17 → u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk]

He definitely gets some air cover for that be even the conservatives appear initially supportive of the Omnibus bill he is tabling

[u/AM_Bokke → u/Anti17]

Carney is a dinosaur. He will make the country worse.

[u/Awkward_War_6068]

Look at Carney in Canada. Very much a background as an economist, head of the Bank of England etc, and he's currently the biggest voice for establishing a new democratic order internationally.

[u/datalicearcher]

Competency only works when there are others who are willing to work as a team toward a shared goal.

Unfortunately, most positions of power come with a hefty side of bullshit. In the US we have immense partisanship for the sake of theatre. Both parties have a lot of the same people funding and the shared goal of keeping the economic system of corporatism and the split comes from one side wanting a lot more all at once, the other side wants it slower.

So competency only works when we can agree on a way to move forward.

[u/junebugreggae]

This guy might be interesting to you

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Figueres_Ferrer

He came up on a rest is history ppdcast..