It's Charisma, Stupid | Hacker News Reader

It's Charisma, Stupid

paulgraham.com

29 pointsmqt67 comments

My first impression was that you were doing a lot of work to explain every single exception or near-exception to your theory.

The case of Gore winning the popular vote is probably the most damaging. I'd consider downgrading the claim to "As video becomes more prevalent, charisma is an increasingly powerful factor."

If you really believe your theory, you should buy Obama for president on Intrade. In fact, you should have bought Obama back when he was trading at 30%, which would make the advance predictive powers of the theory more impressive. How much does hindsight play a role in deciding which candidate was more "charismatic"?

Oops, didn't notice original post was from 2004.

Still, claims to be able to predict elections are a lot more impressive when the person makes a bet on Intrade and then cashes in on it. Money, meet mouth; mouth, meet money.

I said charisma wins elections, not primaries. Primaries are a different matter. Dealmaking seems to count for a lot. That's why they sometimes produce candidates that are so shockingly unelectable, like Mondale.

To be fair to your theory, Reagan was a beast of charisma, wasn't he? I don't think JFK could have beaten him. Mondale was the party faithful rewarding their own in spite of the coming carnage (see also, Dole).

Indeed, that explains to me the one case I'd argue against in your version of recent history. Bush '88 seems in retrospect to have been less charismatic than Dukakis. Or they were very, very close in their wonkiness. But Bush senior was given the benefit of the doubt by the electorate. He became more charismatic in being associated with the Reagan force of nature even as he was actually a big ole stiff. That eventually came out by 1992.

I'd argue the same osmosis almost carried Gore to the presidency. A few moans here and a blue dress there made it much closer than it ever should have been. Problem is, Gore never figured out how to embrace the Clinton legacy (and in so doing would have become more charismatic) while distancing himself from the more distasteful behavior. Still, Gore looked to me, at the time, like a one-term president because of his lack of charisma.

I'm glad you clarified that Paul. Maybe it's just a function of age but I seem to be getting more cynical.

There seems to be some sort of machine that runs the world. The American political system, despite being created as a government by and for the people is part of it.

I think you're exactly right: all things being equal, when it comes to choosing between a few popular options - regardless of whether those options are candidates or products, charisma takes the cake.

What seems to be not equal is the process by which the popular options become the popular options.

Voters in primary elections may also be more interested in politics and less influenced by charisma.

That still doesn't account for Gore winning the popular vote in 2000 in the general election.

Re: gore see footnote [2]. Very smooth reply.

Right, observer's bias seems important here. Being a president builds a strong brand for that person. Beyond that, being in power actually makes people more charismatic. With that, judging their charisma as candidates in retrospect hard.

Kind of like judging company names -- Apple Computers now actually seems like a good name.

I once ran across a book with a similar theory. It was one of those hybrid self-help-business-motivational type books, called something like "You Have To Be Believed To Be Heard". I picked it up idly and happened on a really interesting analysis of presidential elections. The author's point was that the candidate who is better able to establish a positive emotional connection with voters almost always wins, and that ideology and policy had nothing to do with it. (I can't remember if he used the word "charisma".) His main thesis was that the primary emotional brain decides first whether or not it likes something, and only secondarily do rational considerations kick in; therefore, before communicating rationally one must, so to speak, establish positive credentials with the limbic system. The rest of the book was ostensibly about how to go about doing this. Unfortunately it didn't really deliver. But I remember watching the Bush/Kerry debates with this in mind and thinking, there is no rational basis on which Bush should be re-elected, yet if that book was right, Kerry's finished.

Bullseye. And most people would rather like a folksy, funny guy that talks like they do instead of a rich, over-educated, boring guy.

Interesting that this thread has about as many political comments as the rest of YCNews combined, but no one has complained. It's a good example of civil, intelligent political discussion.

The comments about 1968 showed how much has changed. On March 31, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. So Hubert Humphrey launched his campaign in April. Think about it. That would be like Al Gore entering this race 6 weeks from now. What chance would he have?

Also, the nomination defaulted to Humphrey when RFK, possibly the most charismatic candidate ever, was murdered in June.

Nixon had been campaigning behind the scenes for 4 years. Add Vietnam, civil unrest, and culture clash, and Humphrey (the pseudo-incumbent) didn't stand a chance.

I agree with pg's theory. We need charismatic leaders. We crave them. I often wonder how much different the world would be today if JFK, RFK, and MLK hadn't been murdered.

People want charismatic leaders, but I don't think we need them. In fact, I think they are extremely dangerous. Think for a moment about JFK's catch phrase:

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Compare it to catch phrases of other charismatic leaders:

"All within the State, Nothing outside the State, Nothing against the State"

"The common good comes before the private good."

(Sorry for invoking Godwin, but it's important to point out how his charisma obscured what JFK actually said.)

I think it's far better to have a leader that everyone hates. Just think of the outcry if Bush suggested the people should serve the state.

"I think it's far better to have a leader that everyone hates."

Unless that leader has given even the uninformed a reason to hate him ...

A charismatic leader can give the uninformed a reason to hate him, but it won't change their feelings.

An example: a gay friend of mine dislikes Bush because he proposed a law against gay marriage (at least that is his stated reason). He has very strong positive feelings for (Bill) Clinton, in spite of the fact that Clinton actually passed a law against gay marriage (Defense of Marriage Act). His feelings persisted even after I pointed this out to him.

Maybe I just have stupid friends (I don't think this is the case), but my general impression is that most people don't base their opinion of a politician on policy. Rather, they take their opinion on the policy from the party or politician they like.

What about RFK's catch phrase, "Others ask why; I ask why not."

I thought T-rex invented generative catch phrases/advice.

http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001159.html

Sometimes I step back and am really, really amazed that those three guys were assassinated. No wonder people thought the world was about to fall apart to shit in 1968.

Also, "What Charisma Is"

http://www.paulgraham.com/recharisma.html

I can relate to this. Vicente Fox, last president of Mexico was like that. He was fiercely attacked and he made some very stupid comments. Still his popularity remained high. But you could see that he was really happy when he interacted with poor children or old people.

The one problem with the theory I see is that it's easy to choose which candidate is more charismatic after they've won.

So, PG - put your money where your mouth is. Who's the most charismatic candidate this time?

there's an obama sticker on his homepage

Nice catch. I didn't notice that. However, maybe PG just likes Obama - you can support a candidate that you don't think is certain (or even likely) to win.

* No longer relevant given PG's response

Seems obvious to me. Obama by 100 miles. Bill Clinton is even more charismatic, but Hilary alone is not even in the same league. McCain isn't either.

McCain is pretty darn charismatic. Not in the "I'm a nice guy" sense, but in the "I'm authentic" sense. The former is more universally appealing, but the latter certainly has legs. Bush.v2 seemed to convey more of the authenticity, but he would have lost to Bill Clinton. That's what amazing to me about 2000 - Bill Clinton wins that contest, blue dress and all. Still, if there's no blue dress Gore wins in a landslide.

The McCain-Obama matchup this fall is interesting, for the contrasts, but I have to agree that Obama has the once-in-a-generation kind of charisma.

"Bill Clinton is even more charismatic..."

I would say that, in 2007/2008, Obama is far more charismatic. Bill Clinton has tried to inject his "charisma" into this campaign on his wife's behalf and has not made a dent in the "charsima gap" between his wife and Obama.

Trying to compare charisma of 1992 Bill to 2008 Barack is like trying to athletes across eras. Different issues, different prevailing attitudes among the populace, etc.

Friends who have met Bill Clinton in person say he makes you feel great/important even though they only meet him for mere seconds. I mean, he is an ex-POTUS and he makes you feel like the star. If that isn't charisma, what is?

Why does everyone seem to forget that Bill Clinton won only in the context of a strong third-party candidate? If not for Ross Perot's run in 1992, Clinton would almost certainly have lost to Bush senior---and taken down the "charisma wins" theory with him.

While Bush senior might have won without Perot, I don't think it takes down the "charisma wins" argument, since I don't think it applies in elections where there's an incumbent running. The incumbent has a clear advantage, and is presumably already somewhat charismatic since he got elected the first time. While Clinton was certainly more charismatic than Bush, Bush's incumbent status should have been enough to overcome this and win.

Do you have a source for this? Every analysis of exit polls I have seen (for example: http://www.fairvote.org/plurality/perot.htm) shows that Perot split the votes fairly evenly.

Strangely, I can't find much either way. I thought there was a clear case for Bush over Clinton absent Perot, but I may well be wrong.

I also worded the original comment too strongly. Clearly, charisma is a big factor in modern elections, and one data point isn't enough to disprove anything in any case. Concluding that "it's charisma, stupid" does seem to rely on very small-number statistics, though.

Obama is off the charts, but let's be honest, McCain can hold his own in any charisma contest. Do you ever wonder why you never hear about John McCain's ex? This is from a 2000 profile:

  Mr. McCain abandoned his wife, who had reared their three children while he was in Vietnamese prisons, and he then began his political career with the resources of his new wife's family.

  Yet although Mr. McCain's children and some friends were angry and disappointed with him at the time, they rally around him today. No candidate could be luckier in his choice of an ex-wife than Senator McCain, and he must be the only politician around who could cheat on his wife and divorce her and still get her support and her campaign contributions today. Even her friends rave about him.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02EFDF1439F...

Those assessments of charisma are pretty generally agreed upon.

This time it looks like Obama, but I can't say for sure because I never watch TV. I've only seen about 20 seconds of him, in a clip on YouTube.

Hilary Clinton reminds me a lot of Nixon II. She has that same forced smile of someone who's naturally a behind the scenes operator, but who realizes you have to seem friendly to get elected.

That is probably the best description of Hilary Clinton I've ever read.

Very true. To me it seems that the two most charismatic candidates in this race are Obama and Huckabee.

As for the theory being obvious, as far as I know, no one has proposed it before.

Some interesting things come up for a Google Scholar search for "election charisma" (sans quotes). See "Charisma in the 1952 Election", The American Political Science Review, 1954. From a quick skim of this and some other search results, it looks like the theory has been explored a bit and not found much supporting evidence.

How many elections since the invention of TV had there been in 1954?

I think it would be better put as, "The person who exudes leadership qualities is more likely to succeed." It's well known that the taller of the two presidential candidates usually wins, for example. And here's a great article from The Economist on "Physiognomy and Success": http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1...

At this level in politics, all candidates have "leadership qualities." Unless there is a large difference in height (5+ inches, which doesn't happen very often), no one is going to notice.

Bush is shorter than both Gore and Kerry. Guess what? He has much more charisma.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heights_of_United_State...

At this level in politics, all candidates have "charisma" too. He only has more charisma if you define it a posteriori as having won the election.

> Bush is shorter than both Gore and Kerry. Guess what? He has much more charisma.

But he lost the popular vote to Gore. So charisma understands the electoral college?

No, I disagree. There are plenty of completely uncharismatic politicians around. (John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul, Bob Dole, Bush the Elder).

None of them got elected president (except Bush 41, and he was running against Dukakis). All of the data pg used in his argument was about winning presidential general elections.

Is that your list or the official list? The point that started this wasn't that Person X is charismatic while Person Y isn't. It's relative. Second, who judges who is more charismatic, even relatively? Again, the person above says that Bush Jr. was more charismatic than Gore, but the popular vote said the opposite.

Gore did not win the popular vote by a large margin. According to Wikipedia, he was ahead a mere 543,816 (0.5%) votes. [1] It was only the third time in history that a candidate lost while winning popular vote. I don't think you should dwell on that particular point. Can you find examples in other elections where the theory falls apart?

Also, the second footnote in the essay offers the reason that Bush did not focus his campaigning on the popular vote. [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_200...

[2] http://www.paulgraham.com/charisma.html#f2n

PG: Could attractiveness could be substituted for charisma effectively in your theory? Perhaps attractiveness is just an element of charisma, but if considered that way, there's a large body of psychological research that backs you up. For example, this abstract lists a only a really tiny sliver of the repeatable results:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6543(199224)62%3A4%3C413%3AEIAJOP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L

Here's a version of the link that news.yc will take:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6543%28199224%2962%3A4...

Paul Buchheit related this phenomenon to product design in http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/08/first-thing-that-yo...

Obama clearly wins the charisma contest. My wife has fallen for him, reading all his books, etc. This article "Women 'falling for Obama'" really reinforces PG's point http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2269063...

I agree that Obama is more charismatic, but Hillary keeps getting the womens' vote (At least the white and hispanic ones).

This primary is particularly interesting because you're not choosing between two rich white men. Suddenly there's a question of not just "Who has the most charisma?" but also "Who can I best identify with?" According to the states that have had primaries so far, blacks and white women overwhelmingly support the candidate that looks like them. Perhaps that's even more important that charisma?

At the same time, I agree with PG that charisma doesn't play as big a part in primaries. Bill and Hillary are the leaders of the democratic party, so it makes sense that democrats would vote for Hillary rather than the more charismatic Obama.

Well how would you prove it? Just list who was running & pick the most charismatic? There must be many factors to control for, eg incumbency & apportionment. We can do a real study or we can sit around talking till the data comes in.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=113864

You only have two choices. He's saying that the candidate with the most genuine smile is likely to win; past elections are evidence.

what's interesting is that the most charismatic personality type in Jungian theories (ENFJ in MBTI/Kiersey) has never been found in a president, nor has any other 'idealist' http://www.keirsey.com/idealist_presidents.aspx

but it's clearly not a matter of incapability. these people are very human-oriented and like working close to others, things like functional management simply aren't appealing to them

That's probably because those personality types start cults. I've no evidence to back that claim up, though.

9/10ths of the real charisma in this election belongs to Huckabee. His policies are ass-backwards, but he seems like a great guy. Clinton is like a robotic mom addressing a kindergarten class. Obama's charisma, as near as I can tell, is like that of Ron Paul, who actually has almost none. Rather, his supporters all support him because they have decided to see in him what they want to see. I find him hard to listen to--he forces him voice unnaturally low, and seems to stress the wrong words for emphasis.

McCain has no charisma, but he's the only candidate that could really induce fear rather than love.

Obama has almost no charisma? Um, okay....

Um, okay....

Sigh. Here's where I explicate my own words. "who actually has almost none" references Ron Paul. Obama's charisma is similar to RP's in that much of it comes from the fact that his supporters are looking at him sideways. One instance from xkcd:

I want, for once, someone I can vote for not because I dislike the other candidate, but because I’m proud of mine. Obama is the real thing.

Obama has shown a real commitment to open government.

Now, the above expresses an actual liking, not just an agreement policy-wise. I really like Ron Paul's platform, by contrast, but frankly find him annoying. It's important to spot the difference there. Now, Munroe, who is by all accounts a smart person, is supporting Obama because of something called "open government", which Obama has "real commitment" to. I don't see this commitment in the platform, which doesn't contain any references to it:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/politics/2008/bios...

What I see in the platform is standard leftism. But even that is not where Obama's "real commitment" is--his real commitment is "civil rights", if that is understood properly.

Fine. It doesn't matter. The point is this: To really like a guy for something that is a completely negligble part of his platform is quite dangerous. I'm sure a lot of his supporters are actually supporting him for an even worse reason: Because it is the "moral" thing to do, in and of itself.

ADDENDUM: There are some standard ethical declarations of the sort Munroe is talking about here: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/ethics/

Obama comes across as awkward and geeky, but have you not seen the 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address? It was one of the best political speeches in the last 20 years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNCLomrqIN8

As a student of Toastmasters, when I saw that speech live on TV, I knew he'd be a presidential candidate. But in 2008? Never would have guessed so soon. Great speakers connect with the audience. Good speakers merely tell.

What club do you go to?

I go to #9351, Oratory Authority, a lunchtime club in Boston: http://ourdoings.com/oratory-authority/

After the final surge to get my CTM and moving office locations, I dropped out. I still do get a public speaking fix through some storytelling gigs. I'd rather not say which specific club (I like to think I am a wallflower) but that Toastmaster club is/was a fantastic supportive environment to practice public speaking. For the only way to learn public speaking is to actually do it. The value of the feedback (handwritten comments that you get after a speech) was tremendous - where else can you get honest supportive feedback - people want you to succeed. The fact that it was a corporate club that was not my company was a plus - felt safe to talk about whatever - no coworkers (except the one guy I carpooled with).

This election is fundamentally different from others.

Clinton, by virtue of having breasts, makes women feel good about themselves. That's an X-factor which was not present in any past election. And she plays this up, by crying and planting fake sexists at her campaign events (http://michellemalkin.com/2008/01/07/bs-alert-hillarys-iron-...).

As for Obama, you are right. His supporters are projecting. But they project onto him (rather than Hillary) because he is incredibly charismatic.

It's hard for me to believe anything sourced through Michelle Malkin. Sorry.

I know Paul is of the opinion that tables are simpler than divs, but even tables don't have to be set to a fixed width in pixels!

Followup: http://www.paulgraham.com/recharisma.html

I think that it's impossible to state firmly (especially in a forum called hacker news :) ) that George Bush Jr beat either Gore or Kerry. This is because electronic voting machines were used to count many of the votes.

Electronic voting machines leave no paper trail which means the results are unverifiable.

Ugh. The Diebold bot is voting me down.

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