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A Bradley Smith  writes in the WSJ, regarding the recent Supreme Court ruling:  

“Already, 28 states representing 60% of the nation’s population allow corporate independent expenditures in state races. These states, including Virginia, Utah and Oregon, are hardly mismanaged. Rather, they are disproportionately among the fastest growing, best governed states in the country.“

(Italics mine.)

By what statistic does he find they are “among the best governed”?

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Today the Supreme Court ruled that businesses and unions can spend their own money on political ads endorsing or opposing a candidate. This raises a question I have long wondered about: how effective are political ads?

Do you really base who you are going to vote for on what ads on TV say? If  there are a lot of people who are that gullible, the Nation is doomed no matter what the Supreme Court rules on this issue. Seriously, I can barely remember any ads from the last Presidential campaign. And I’m fairly confident that my decision was not swayed by them one way or another.

I can’t speak for most people on this issue. And let’s face it; if you’ve brainwashed someone correctly, they’ll swear up and down they were not brainwashed. So I can’t be sure the ads didn’t affect me. 

A friend of mine was telling me that the real danger here is that corporations will disguise the ads to look like authentic news broadcasts–like is sometimes done in infomercials. This will confuse people into believing they’re watching a unbiased newscast that’s saying “Candidate X eats babies.”

I don’t buy it. The only people stupid enough to fall for that are probably already watching their favorite propaganda network (Fox news or MSNBC) anyway. Their votes are locked in. The swing voters aren’t, for the most part, dumb enough to be tricked like that.

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…is fun to read once you understand the “charisma theory”. Paul Graham’s excellent essay on charisma is worth reading just for the description of how shallow most election analysis is. 

With regard to Scott Brown’s election, I’ve heard the following explanations:

  • Democrats were too Liberal
  • Democrats were not Liberal enough.
  • The economy is bad, so voters took it out on Coakley.
  • Americans are making a stand against Socialism!
  • Coakley ran a bad campaign.

The last is true, but the reason it was a bad campaign is because when you’re that uncharismatic everything you do seems to suck.

The charisma gap is, I’m convinced, the sole reason for this outcome.

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I define anti-charisma as a phenomenon that causes the unlucky bearer to inspire an instinctively hostile reaction in others. If an anti-charismatic person says “Yes we can!”, the response is “You’re not the boss of me.”
Anti-charisma doesn’t seem to be as well analyzed as charisma, but here is my unscientific list of  a few prominent people who I believe have it.

  • Dick Cheney
  • Richard Nixon
  • Bill Belichick 
  • John Kerry
  • Al Gore

Most of them are politicians–Kerry and Gore largely unsuccessful ones, Cheney only successful by joining with a charismatic running mate, Nixon by avoiding debates with other candidates. Belichick, despite being the best active NFL coach, inspires none of the admiration in the national media or fans in general that is expressed for lesser coaches.
The reason I bring this up is because Martha Coakely looks destined to join them on this list. One of the hallmarks, in my opinion, of anti-charisma is that mistakes the anti-charismatic person makes tend to have greater impact than they really warrant, and Coakley is no exception. Whereas Obama could be forgiven for saying he’d been in 57 states, Coakley is mocked far more aggressively for a campaign ad in which “Massachusetts” was misspelled.
Then there are personal factors such as appearance and voice. This ad is a textbook example of a charismatic voice vs. an anti-charismatic one. And Nixon provided a legendary illustration  of what a difference looks make.
To be continued…

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Ed Schultz says he’d cheat to win the Massachusetts senate race. Of course, one of the first rules of cheating is not to say “I’m going to cheat now”, so Schultz would seem to be a lousy “dirty tricks” man.

Also, of course, people are more likely to cheat for a charismatic candidate. It’s much harder to make them cheat for an un-charismatic one.

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via The Daily Dish:

“Here is congressman Capuano from Cambridge, rejected in favor of the tired, useless hack, Coakley:”

He does seem more passionate than Coakley. But there’s still no charisma there. And, quite frankly, shallow though it is, looks matter if you want to win an election, and Brown is better-looking than Capuano. 

He might’ve put up a better fight, but I doubt he’d win.

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…if the charisma theory holds, anyway.



I’ll grant this is not a perfect comparison, but, c’mon, she speaks like a robot in that video. Brown is by no means stunningly charismatic like Obama, but he totally has what it takes to beat her out in this race. To make matters even worse, he seems to have gotten off that killer blow: the signature line: “It’s the people’s seat”. And he’s good-looking. And he was an actor. And he is running against the incumbent party. This spells disaster for the Democrats. And no, Obama campaigning for Coakley will not help, because charisma is not transferable
.
At this point, it would be a Truman-beating-Dewey level upset if Coakley won.