I was looking at the blogs of people who shared favorite movies and books with me, and I was shocked to see how many blogs people have not updated in years, many since their inaugural posts. As I discovered, blogging is harder than you would think.
Incidentally, the other thing I noticed in my travels across the blogosphere was how many blogs there are about food. Don’t get me wrong, they’re really interesting, but I am amazed that it is such a popular topic.
…and health care does, in fact, pass, the obvious question is: does it relate in any way to Obama being the most charismatic guy in Washington? (Okay, maybe that’s only obvious to folks who regularly read this blog.)
Frankly, I don’t think the bill’s fate actually relates to Obama’s charisma that much; most of what he’s doing involves persuading other politicians, who I suspect have developed immunity to charisma because of high exposure to it over the course of their careers.
I don’t think so. The Democrats are disorganized, and the bill is highly controversial, to say the least. I don’t think they’ll be able to convince enough Congressmen that it’s worth the risk.
What do you think?
Yet more not-so-bad economic news.
As I’ve often said, charisma is the #1 factor in determining elections. In elections where there is not a meaningful “charisma gap” between candidates, however, the economy is often the deciding factor. And, right now, an improving economy benefits the Democrats.
“Government by Party! Introduce that great and glorious element… and all will be well! No political measures will endure, because one Party will assuredly undo all that the other Party has done; and… the legislative action of the country will be at a standstill. Then there will be sickness in plenty, endless lawsuits, crowded jails, interminable confusion in the Army and Navy, and, in short, general and unexampled prosperity!”–W.S. Gilbert, Utopia, Limited. Act II. 1893.
Apparently, a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative was killed by a drone attack last week.
And, once again, I must applaud this administration’s decision to step up drone usage.
In his blog post today, he has a very interesting discussion of “leadership energy”, which sounds very similar to what I’ve talked about on this blog under the name “charisma”.
It’s well worth reading; and as I said in my first post on the topic, Adams has influenced my thinking on charisma a good deal.
It seems like Adams, Paul Graham, and Max Weber are the only people who have really explored this in much detail. Do you know of anyone else?
As the economic recovery takes hold, it makes sense to suppose that market equilibria will go back to where they were before the crisis hit in late Summer of 2008.
In other words; the return of high gas prices. Remember, $4.00 a gallon gasoline had dominated the headlines until mid-September of ’08.
In many ways, this is actually a worse problem then the huge recession. High gas prices lead to “stagflation”, which causes both unemployment and inflation to rise. Normally, there is thought to be a trade-off between the two.
Andrew Romanoff, the more charismatic candidate, won them. As the article notes, however, that doesn’t mean he’ll win the nomination.
Still, it’s a victory for charisma.
Somehow I neglected to notice this, but yesterday was the one-year anniversary of this blog. My first post can be read here if you don’t feel like using the archive.
I still wonder about that post. I think it’s true; but I can’t help feeling it seems to be more of an insult to Republicans, rather than the constructive criticism I intended. The word “empathy” has come to have a much more positive connotation than it really should, I think.
