Do Appointees' Votes Give Too Much Power to the Chair?

I’ve been thinking about the bylaws amendment #2—the one about removing voting rights from the four appointed officers.  One of the arguments people use is that allowing those appointees to vote gives the Chair too much power.

If Alice wins the race for Chair, that implies that a majority of Mensans approve of Alice’s intended direction for the organization.

Now assume Alice picks four people to be Communications Officer, Membership Officer, Development Officer, and Director of Science & Education. (oops—erase that assumption, because the DSE is really the Mensa Foundation representative to the AMC and is picked by the Foundation Trustees.)

Sooo… next assumption, which seems to be the one people supporting the amendment hold, is that these three appointees are obsequious sycophants for the Chair and will nearly always vote according to her wishes.

(Never mind that it’s actually rather hard to imagine any Mensan being a mindless yes-man and that actual analysis of voting records shows this is not how things actually transpire).

If Alice wins because most Mensans like her vision for the organization, why would anyone NOT want her to have a little extra leverage via the appointed officers when it gets to making things happen and change? Sometimes people even vote for entire slates of candidates who profess to share a common platform. Why would you want to saddle a Chair you elected with a board who disagrees with her goals and ideas?

Why do so many think that disagreement amongst board members when it comes down to the actual vote on a motion is a good thing?  Many views, much lively discussion as part of the process of whittling a motion down to something most can agree on— isn’t that what we really want? When it comes to the actual vote on a motion, wouldn’t it be ideal to have it turn out unanimous—because of all that advance discussion and work that went into making the final motion something so awesome everyone agrees on it?

I understand the fears about GroupThink (see this previous post or this other post on that topic), and I agree that would be a very bad thing. But we must not use that term and that fear to make us instead institute disagreement and gridlock.