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As I’ve said several times, I don’t think Romney will win the election, because he isn’t as likeable and charismatic as Obama.  But people ask: “he could win, though, right?  There’s a chance?  There is not, as John McLaughlin might say, ‘absolute metaphysical certitude’ of his defeat?”

Is there a precedent for the charismatic, gifted orator being beaten by the boring but wealthy guy?  Why yes, yes there is.  In 1896 William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan despite Bryan being a brilliant and popular speaker.

President William McKinley

McKinley represented the business interests of the city and Bryan represented the poor farmers—the populists.  Bryan embarked on a tour of the country; McKinley stayed on his front porch and let the people come to him.  Bryan was youthful and exciting, McKinley had more money.  Indeed, McKinley’s campaign created the modern form of campaign finance: convincing businesses to give you money by telling them your opponent will be bad for them.

Case in point: you want to hear some class warfare?  Here’s the end of Bryan’s famous “Cross of Gold” speech:

It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but three millions in number, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation; shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

William Jennings Bryan in 1896

Wow!  It sounds like Pat Robertson speaking on behalf of Occupy Wall Street!  This sort of thing was what enabled the Mckinley campaign to convince business that it was worth their while to give lots of money to the cause of preventing Bryan’s election.  And, evidently, it worked.  As the chart here shows, 1896 had by far the most campaign spending of any campaign in history as a percentage of GDP.

So, there is Romney’s blueprint: have more corporate money on his side than Obama and hope that will see him through.  There is some reason to think this could happen, given the Citizens United decision and the rise of so-called “Super-PACS”.  It could, I repeat, could happen.

However, there are lots of reasons why I think 2012 is not 1896:

  • No radio/television/internet in 1896.  These technologies are a force multiplier for charisma.  If they had existed in 1896, Bryan would probably have won.
  • Bryan was not the incumbent President.  Incumbency gives someone an advantage in that they are not only some guy running for President, but actually the President of the United States.  Even if unpopular, the office gives the occupant an automatic degree of authority and respect.
  • Romney isn’t as good at campaigning as McKinley.
  • Obama is more friendly to the business establishment than Bryan was.  Ask around among the disappointed progressives and you’ll see that they can only wish Obama would give a “cross of gold”-style speech.

I’ll allow that there is a slim chance Romney could win, but I still do not think it is likely.

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James Madison probably couldn’t win the Presidency today. He was only 5 ft 4. (Image via Wikipedia)

Liberal friends of mine sometimes wonder how I can be so optimistic about Obama’s chances in the election, and yet be so cynical about politics in general.  They wondered the same thing in 2008.

Basically, I support Obama, but I think he wins for the wrong reasons.  It’s not his fault, though.  I don’t think he can do anything about it, even if he wanted to.  It’s mostly due to the charisma thing that I talk about so much, rather than his actual policies, that Obama enjoys so much success.  There are always polls coming out showing more people just “like” Obama as a person than support all his policies.

It’s not just charisma–though-mostly–but all kinds of superficial factors.  Imagine if Obama had all the same policies, and said all the same stuff, but instead were a short, bald, pot-bellied, bespectacled man with a high-pitched, nasal voice.  I doubt he would have been elected Senator.  People don’t want to support a guy like that, even if he is totally right about things.  This is especially true since the advent of television.

Presidential elections aren’t really determined by policy, or ideology, or anything like that.  They are determined by who has the more “likeable” candidate.  The Democrats happen to have him at the moment, but the Republicans have had him in the past.

On paper, actually, Mitt Romney is a pretty good candidate for meeting the superficial requirements.  He’s good-looking for a man his age–“distinguished” I think is the term–and he looks fairly tall.  Decent speaking voice.  His only flaw, from a superficial standpoint, is his total inability to interact normally with people.  Perhaps he needs a holographic avatar to make it easier.

So, I’m quite cynical about politics, but I’m fortunate in that right now the political system seems to favor the candidate who supports the same policies I do.  In the long run, however, I think this is not the ideal way to pick a President.

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Here we observe one of the dangers of academic tenure…

The short version, if you don’t have time to watch the video, is like this: evidently having nothing better to do, Roberto Unger, a former professor of President Obama’s, has concluded that same President Obama must be defeated. This defeat will, so he says, “allow the voice of democratic prophecy to speak once again in American life.”

Obviously, the good professor knows this will not happen under President Romney.  But the defeat of Obama is necessary to allow for true progressivism to return, he believes.

Let us look at history, shall we?  From 1968 until 1992, the Republicans won every Presidential election but one.  The Democrats finally got Clinton in ’92, but this was largely through the “New Democrat” strategy of adopting many laissez-faire Republican economic policies.  In other words, the Democrats accomplished their victory only by becoming much more like the Republicans on economic issues.  Not exactly what Prof. Unger is looking for.

Cast back a bit further, and we find the shoe on the other foot: From 1932 until 1952, the Republicans did not win a Presidential election. When they finally did win, it was with Dwight Eisenhower, a war hero and a man so friendly to the New Deal that Republican extremists suspected him of communism.  Clearly, the Republicans had to capitulate a good deal to the Democrats on economic policy.

In recent times, there are two instances where a party lost an election and four years later returned with a more extreme candidate: 1964 and 1980.  Goldwater was more extreme than Nixon, and he was crushed.  Reagan was more extreme than Ford, and he won handily.  So, it’s kind of a mixed bag.  (Not, of course, if you factor in charisma; then it is all quite explicable.)

The record is pretty clear: parties rarely favor their more radical economic policies in the wake of sound defeats.  They do just the opposite, trying to emulate and subsume elements of the winning party’s policies.  This is especially true for Democrats.  I therefore judge Prof. Unger’s plan a bad one.

(Video via Huffington Post.  Also check out this post about Prof. Unger at The Reaction.)

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Paul Krugman is excited that the press is calling Romney out for cherry-picking data. Krugman also believes they are treating Romney with a more critical eye than they did George W. Bush.

And he’s right. But, I suspect the reason for this is a rather depressing one: Romney is less charismatic than Bush was. This, rather than any new-found commitment to truth on the part of the national press, is what has caused this. Both Romney and Bush are rich sons of politicians, but Bush could more credibly pull off the “I’m just like the average Joe”  act. Whereas Romney just seems like an awkward rich guy when he tries that.

In terms of both who they are and, what is more important, what they mean to do to the country, Bush and Romney are quite similar in my eyes. The differences are superficial, but superficial differences are, as it happens, quite important in Presidential campaigns these days.