Author: gbump

When we think about presidents losing their mental grip, we generally go back to Woodrow Wilson, who had a stroke in 1919 that left him bedridden and pretty much off the playing field. “Wilson was the worst case of presidential disability,” said John Cooper, a Wilson expert at the University of Wisconsin. The stroke was followed by other physical ailments and a long period of isolation under the protection of his wife, who some claimed was taking over the presidency. It left Wilson’s cognitive function unimpaired, Cooper said, “but it warped his judgment horribly.”

“Without being tremendously well organized, it can be easy to fail,” said Donald Moynihan, a professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is writing a book on the effects of administrative burdens. Researchers have studied the ways complexity can reduce sign-ups for workplace pension plans, participation in food stamps and turnout in elections, he noted. “These sorts of little barriers are ways in which humans get tripped up all the time when they’re trying to do something that might benefit them.”

“From a gut instinct I would suspect there were multiple agents involved in that epidemic,” says Caitlin Pepperrell, a researcher who studies infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved with the study.

Make sure the quick win isn’t too hard or too easy, adds Alex Stajkovic, assistant professor of management and human resources at the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin. “Easy goals are not motivating, and goals perceived to be beyond our ability may cause cessation of effort,” he says.

According to David Fields, Center for East Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Korean-American complex is like a precarious iron tower, which is strong but brittle, ready to collapse from any unexpected action like a preemptive strike of North Korea by the Trump administration.