The debate between nature and nurture - whether human behavior and traits are primarily shaped by genetics (nature) or environment and experience (nurture) — has been going on for over 400 years, and its roots stretch even further back to Plato and Aristotle. For Thomas Fellows, one day in 1993 at an Ace Hardware in North Atlanta will stand out the day he was nurtured by his mother’s challenge to rake leaves at age four to earn his toys, and years later, after much a stretch of failures that never seemed to end, he was nurtured further, and as a result, learned what Malcolm Gladwell in David and Goliath calls “compensation learning.” This is the process by which people develop exceptional skills or insights precisely because they must compensate for a disadvantage or limitation. His stretch of failures also led him to have a chip on his shoulder, which constantly got him into the “fight or flight” mode of being and thinking which has enabled ordinary people to do extraordinary things. It's widely known that Lincoln failed often and had many people doubt him along the way. Certainly not bad company.

While Fellows has stated in the media that his political views are that of a moderate conservative (a modern-day Bill Clinton with how far left the left has gotten to be), he said he will run as an Independent.  Fellows may be deeply knowledgeable in every field he comments on, but his greatest strength is his willingness to listen—truly listen—to the voices of ordinary people he meets at a golf course, a restaurant bar, or anywhere life brings him. In that humble discipline, he mirrors what made Bill Clinton so politically formidable: an instinctive ability to absorb the hopes, frustrations, and wisdom of everyday Americans. That connection to real people—not elite circles—is what builds trust, credibility, and the kind of favorability that can’t be manufactured.  

Doing this also lives out the words of David Brooks in The Road to Character when he said, “humility is the awareness that there’s a lot you don’t know and what you do know is either wrong or distorted.”  To do this, you must avoid cognitive bias.  A telling tidbit about Fellows avoiding cognitive bias at the end of this page:

While he does hope to unify the country, he thinks that to unify the country solely for the sake of unity is indefensible, unnecessary.  But if we were all to unify it so all of us can win more often, it would be worth the hassle and effort.  Someone once said “history is not the study of the past, but an explanation of the present.” If one were to look at the population of Birmingham, AL and Atlanta, GA in 1950, they would see that they were nearly identical.  Today, Atlanta is six times as big as Birmingham.  The reason why Atlanta’s population soared past Birmingham’s is because they were much more open to accepting African -Americans.  Unity to Atlanta led to the city having major sports teams, having the Olympics in 1996, getting the CDC, and having companies call Atlanta their home such as Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Delta.  For Birmingham, however, their decision not to be open left them open to defeat.