Cunningly simple? Or cunningly simplistic?

Who wins presidential elections? Is it a matter of issues? Is it a matter of being a moderate coalition-builder versus being a extremist demogogue? Is it a matter of subtle shifts between red and blue and purple?

Perhaps the answer is, as Paul Graham puts it, more straightforward: that the presidential election goes to the most charismatic candidate.

People who write about politics, whether on the left or the right, have a consistent bias: they take politics seriously. When one candidate beats another they go looking for political explanations. The country is shifting to the left, or the right. And that sort of shift can certainly be the result of a presidential election, which makes it easy to believe it was the cause.

But when I think about why I voted for Clinton over the first George Bush, it was not because I was shifting to the left. Clinton just seemed much more dynamic. He seemed to want the job more. Bush seemed old and tired. I suspect it was the same for a lot of voters.

Clinton didn’t represent any national shift leftward. He was just more charismatic than George Bush or (God help us) Bob Dole. In 2000 we got practically a controlled experiment to prove it: Gore had Clinton’s policies, but not his charisma, and he suffered proportionally. Same story in 2004. Kerry was smarter and more articulate than Bush, but rather a stiff. And Kerry lost.

(Take that, all you D&D players who min your CHA to beef up combat skills. You may have that big chest of dragon’s gold, but you’ll never be elected president!)

Graham may be onto something (he goes back to 1960, positing that TV is a major part of this, allowing a more direct personal communication with candidates). If things are a toss-up, certainly, folks will go with their gut. I voted for Kerry, but I’d rather have Bush over for a BBQ, and he certainly seemed more likable (as long as you didn’t already consider him the Living Embodiment of Evil).

I’m not sure it says much about the electorate, though I suspect that’s subject to deeper analysis, too. Charisma isn’t just flashy teeth and big smiles — there’s also an element of personal engagement, and a subconscious analysis that goes on, too. But, at any rate, I thought it was an interesting article.

(via DOF)

(Posted by CronDave)