House-hunting speculation a distraction from important Pompeo information

As Kansas voters, we learned a lot from the extensive interview with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that was published in Sunday’s Wichita Eagle.

Particularly helpful were his extended comments about how he reconciles his past support for free trade with the more protectionist policies of the Trump Administration. That is the kind of information voters need — how a politician draws on his experiences to confront new challenges.

We also learned about how Pompeo might transition from diplomat to candidate, signaling to potential primary voters and other potential candidates that he will run for the Senate seat currently held by Republican Pat Roberts. In discussing he and his wife’s future, Pompeo said he “expects they’ll buy property in Kansas again.” Reporters Lindsay Wise and Bryan Lowry called this “a move that would be seen as a prerequisite for running for elected office in the state.”

I agree that this will be seen as a “prerequisite for running for elected office in the state.” I just wish it were not seen that way. A successful businessman-turned-government official like Pompeo could easily buy a home in any part of the state, and still be a successful senator. Or he and his wife, Susan, could even rent.

The Pompeos could rent a house in their old neighborhood in Wichita, within an easy walk of a Spangles and a Schlotsky’s. They could rent an apartment in Shawnee and stroll to the Wonderscope Children’s Museum and have a relatively short drive to the Kansas City Airport. Depending on availability, they might even be able to rent a farm with a view of the 16-story-tall coal shovel Big Brutus, and enjoy sunset views of a monument to the mining heritage of southeast Kansas.

None of these decisions would tell us anything useful about a potential Senator Pompeo. As Secretary of State he needs to be in Washington, D.C., a lot, but also travel internationally. He also needs to keep up his connection to American citizens, who are in effect his clients. Pompeo’s life as a senator would be similar, just with more work time in Kansas and less work time overseas.

Elections are job interviews, and we as voters occupy the role of hiring managers. As such we need to gather information about how the candidate would approach the challenge of a new job. For candidates without a long public record of public service, we might have to extrapolate from their residential choices to predict their future choices as a legislator.

But in the case of the secretary of state, the problem is not too little data, but too much. The time between now and when Pompeo finally announces his decision on whether to run for Senate, which could be as long as 15 months, will give us even more data.

So let’s keep our focus on what Pompeo says and does in his current role. The work of government is not like an episode of HGTV’s “House Hunters,” where we all pretend that we learned something significant about people from their property choices.

Focusing on the property choices of Mike and Susan Pompeo is a reasonable activity for other potential Senate candidates, who are trying to decide whether they want to take the professional risk of applying for a job in the U.S. Senate. For the rest of us, this “prerequisite for running for elected office” is just a distraction.