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A professor named Allan Lichtman has a model for predicting elections that indicates Obama will win re-election. According to that article, his model has been right about every election since 1984.

I agree with most of what his model says, but I take issue with his assessment of point #12 of his model “Incumbent charisma”. He says:

“‘I did not give President Obama the incumbent charisma key. I counted it against him. He’s really led from behind. He didn’t really take the lead in the healthcare debate, he didn’t use his speaking ability to move the American people during the recession. He’s lost his ability to connect since the 2008 election.'”

I disagree with the idea that Obama didn’t “take the lead”. He did give speeches on all of those issues, after all. He’s not the King, as both Liberals and Conservatives sometimes seem to think; he still has to deal with Congress. These are vague complaints, which I think reflect wishful thinking on Prof. Lichtman’s part.

Also, Obama after 2008 was dangerously close to becoming overexposed. If he’d kept showing up everywhere to talk about issues, people would be sick of him. Obama has wisely conserved his charismatic abilities so as to be able to use them for his campaign.

Bottom line, though, I agree with this appraisal. The one other caveat, as I see it, is on point #13 “Challenger charisma”. Palin has some charisma, so if she decided to run it would change things, but it’s hard to know what she’s doing. And I still think Obama would win.

(Hat Tip to Megan McArdle)

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So, I was reading the late Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States this past weekend. Reading this book on Fourth of July weekend is probably enough to consign me to Hell in the opinion of some Conservatives, for Zinn aimed to de-romanticize many of our well-known historical figures, like Columbus and the Founders, and to tell history from the perspectives of native Americans, women, slaves and so forth. He was also a socialist, and certainly an obsession with class permeates his book.

One issue I see in it, particularly in Zinn’s section on the Founding Fathers, is that his reasoning often takes this form: the rules of the government were made by the powerful, and protected their interests. (A lot of this, in the case of the Founders, is based on the work of Charles Beard) This is certainly true, and it’s worth keeping in mind. But it is also worth remembering that the powerful always make the rules by definition, because that is what power is. This is trivially true, in other words.

Now, distrust of concentrated power is a very healthy thing in my opinion, and of course more equal distribution of power is theoretically what representative Democracy like ours does. We elect people who will act in what they think is the best interest of their constituents. But these people still have quite a lot of power; all voting does is give the people the chance to pick who they think will act in their best interest with power. And this is where things like charisma and personal qualities can be something of an “X factor”, and sometimes lead to undesirable results.

So, I’m not sure what exactly Zinn would have liked to see in place of this system, since 100% equality of power seems impossible. Still, Zinn’s idea of looking at history from a different perspective is very interesting one, and all the more so given the outright hatred his work inspires among the Conservatives.

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The Week has a summary of the reaction to President Obama filling out a bracket for the NCAA basketball tournament, and notes that, predictably, the Republicans think it’s just awful that he would do such a thing with the terrible disaster in Japan and the unrest in the Middle East going on.

It’s similar to the situation back in June, when people were upset at Obama for playing golf and BP CEO Tony Hayward for attending a yacht race when the oil spill was going on. At the time, I wrote:

“The fact is, there is nothing that either Hayward or Obama need to do that they cannot do from a yacht race or a golf course. I suspect that at their level, almost all of their “oversight” can be done using cell phones.”

Same logic applies here. There’s probably not much Obama can do about these things other than put the right people in charge of those areas and perhaps make some calls.

But, as we all know, it is as much how they are perceived as what they actually do that matters for a President–or any high-ranking leader. (Republican strategist Lee Atwater supposedly said that “perception is reality”, though I think that quote–and I know that sentiment–predate him by quite a bit.)

I suspect, of course, that a politician’s charisma is what really determines the contemporary consensus on whether whatever they choose to do in a crisis is judged “good crisis handling” or “bad crisis handling’. But it might just be differences in skill between different political “spin” people.

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Jill Lawrence has an interesting article concerning George Will’s use of the phrase “the charisma of competence” in talking about Republican governor Mitch Daniels.

She mentions that this approach is similar to that taken by Michael Dukakis, whose decision to stress his “competence” failed to get him elected.

I’d never heard the phrase “charisma of competence” before; but I think that, in general, stressing their “competence” is often the last refuge of an anti-charismatic politician.

Charisma isn’t just being good-looking and attractive (though that helps) but the effect is very much the same: it produces an exciting “vibe” around the charismatic person in a way that no record of achievement ever really can. As Lawrence herself writes: “…let’s be honest, competence is not in itself charismatic. It’s boring.”

Indeed; though that is a little troubling if we accept the Paul Graham theory (as I do) that charisma is what determines the outcome of Presidential elections.

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Interesting article by Maureen Callahan in the New York Post about Sarah Palin’s media strategy, as well as a brief (if oblique) history of the power of charisma for Presidential candidates. It pretty neatly sums up what I’ve been trying to say on this blog for a while now.

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As a follow-up to this post, I realized that I neglected to mention another President who made use of appearing on entertainment television, or at least was not hurt by it: Ronald Reagan.

Sarah Palin herself made note of this fact, arguing against those who say it’s not Presidential to star in a reality show by noting that Reagan had been an actor, and had appeared in some not-especially-Presidential films.

Fair point, I suppose. And Reagan, like Palin and unlike Nixon, had charisma, which made it seem acceptable. (I have a theory that all actors, even lousy ones, have high levels of charisma compared to the general population.) There is, it seems, little which charisma cannot overcome.

On the other hand, Reagan quit working as an actor in 1965, 15 years before he became President. As Peggy Noonan writes as a rebuke to Palin:

“Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president.”

These qualifications do seem rather more than Palin’s. (As an aside, it’s hard to imagine any artists-turned-union-leaders running for the Republicans nowadays.)

In the end, though, it goes back to the idea that our standards that have changed with time. Reagan was considered an intellectual lightweight in his day and age, as Palin is in the present day. Call me a pessimist if you like, but I believe this is due to a decline in what we expect of our politicians. If someone with Palin’s credentials had tried to run in Reagan’s time, imagine the reaction. P M Prescott‘s comment here says it very well: “The electorate is getting more and more into voting as fans of someone famous, even if it’s famous for being famous.”

And if Reagan’s charisma and celebrity overcame his relative lack of real policy credentials, then what is there to stop Palin’s charisma and celebrity from overcoming hers?


P.S. Incidentally, having read Noonan’s argument that Reagan’s time as SAG President helped him as a politician, I find that I cannot resist quoting these rather prescient lines of Ernest’s song “Were I a King” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Grand Duke:

“Oh, the man who can rule a theatrical crew,
Each member a genius (and some of them two),
And manage to humour them, little and great,
Can govern this tuppenny State!”

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Rob Reiner compares the Tea Party to the Nazis, and brings up the possibility of them having a charismatic leader. He says:

“My fear is that the tea party gets a charismatic leader… Because all they’re selling is fear and anger. And that’s all Hitler sold. ‘I’m angry and I’m frightened and you should hate that guy over there.’ And that’s what they’re doing.” 

Our Nazi-comparison-based political discourse and the importance of charisma are two of my favorite topics. So, with that in mind, I have to say first of all that Reiner is very wrong to make this comparison. The Tea Party is many things, all of which I believe to be wrong, but I really don’t think they want to commit genocide. The Nazi comparisons are uncalled for and foolish, in my opinion.

Now, as to the possibility of the Tea Party getting a charismatic leader: they already have at least one, possibly two. For a long time, I’ve thought that Sarah Palin is charismatic. And, more recently, it seems like Glenn Beck has emerged as their leader; and if you can think of some reason for that other than charisma, you’ve got me beat.

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I have to admit: when I first heard about Christine O’Donnell, she seemed okay to me. So she was unemployed and spent all her time running for senate. “Good for her,” I thought, “lots of people are unemployed; it doesn’t make you a second-class citizen.”

Then the witch thing was pretty weird, but again; one could argue that at least it shows a sort of open-mindedness which most liberal-leaning people tend not to expect from Republicans. Even in light of all her strange quotes, she still seems like a nice person to me, if a bit odd.

The thing is, (assuming I lived in Delaware, which I don’t) I wouldn’t vote for her based on the fact that she seems like a nice person. Yet, I have to assume that this is why her supporters are voting for her, in the absence of any actual track record.

And then this “I’m you” ad comes out, which I find very interesting indeed. Not because of what she says so much as the design of the ad; it’s not about policy but rather about emphasizing O’Donnell’s “likeability”. (Robert Stacy McCain, a conservative blogger and supporter of O’Donnell, has a good analysis that more or less agrees with mine.)

While it is true that representatives are indeed supposed to represent my interests, I do not believe that they need to be exactly like me to do so. I personally would prefer someone who explained why they were better at certain things than me.

That said, since this is much the same rhetoric used by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and other “Tea Party” leaders, I’m forced to conclude that it appeals to a lot of people.

This all goes back, I think, to the fundamental shift in American politics which I discussed in this post (and which was described much better than I could do by an Anonymous commenter on same post) and this post. People now seem to judge politicians more on their personality, appearance and affability than on their education, philosophy and policies.

I wouldn’t actually go so far as to say that Christine O’Donnell is a remarkably charismatic person (yet), but she is at least the result of the same phenomenon that drives the increasing power of charisma in the political system–it is not anything which she has specifically done that excites people, but rather her very personality.

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This past September 26 was the fiftieth anniversary of the first Kennedy/Nixon debate in the 1960 Presidential Campaign. It is famous for being the first televised Presidential debate, and subsequently as an example of the influence television could have on a campaign.

Everyone knows the story: Nixon looked haggard and ill, Kennedy looked fit and healthy. Some say that Kennedy’s appearance in that debate was what won him the election. I feel that is only partially true–what helped Kennedy here was not just his good looks, but mainly his charisma, which was now being shown to a wider audience than in any previous election.

In fact, to me, this debate marks the moment when, because of television, charisma emerged as the most powerful force in U.S. politics. Nixon represented what Max Weber called “Legal Domination“, whereas Kennedy represented “Charismatic Domination“. My view is that Kennedy’s victory demonstrated that television had now enabled charismatic domination to come to the fore.

The real question, I guess, is: was this a good thing or a bad thing?