It's Charisma, Stupid

Occam's razor says we should prefer the simpler of two explanations. I begin by reminding readers of this principle because I'm about to propose a theory that will offend both liberals and conservatives. But Occam's razor means, in effect, that if you want to disagree with it, you have a hell of a coincidence to explain.

Theory: In US presidential elections, the more charismatic candidate wins.

People who write about politics, whether on the left or the right, have a consistent bias: they take politics seriously. When one candidate beats another they look for political explanations. The country is shifting to the left, or the right. And that sort of shift can certainly be the result of a presidential election, which makes it easy to believe it was the cause.

But when I think about why I voted for Clinton over the first George Bush, it wasn't because I was shifting to the left. Clinton just seemed more dynamic. He seemed to want the job more. Bush seemed old and tired. I suspect it was the same for a lot of voters.

Clinton didn't represent any national shift leftward. \[[1](#f1n)\] He was just more charismatic than George Bush or (God help us) Bob Dole. In 2000 we practically got a controlled experiment to prove it: Gore had Clinton's policies, but not his charisma, and he suffered proportionally. \[[2](#f2n)\] Same story in 2004. Kerry was smarter and more articulate than Bush, but rather a stiff. And Kerry lost.

As I looked further back, I kept finding the same pattern. Pundits said Carter beat Ford because the country distrusted the Republicans after Watergate. And yet it also happened that Carter was famous for his big grin and folksy ways, and Ford for being a boring klutz. Four years later, pundits said the country had lurched to the right. But Reagan, a former actor, also happened to be even more charismatic than Carter (whose grin was somewhat less cheery after four stressful years in office). In 1984 the charisma gap between Reagan and Mondale was like that between Clinton and Dole, with similar results. The first George Bush managed to win in 1988, though he would later be vanquished by one of the most charismatic presidents ever, because in 1988 he was up against the notoriously uncharismatic Michael Dukakis.

These are the elections I remember personally, but apparently the same pattern played out in 1964 and 1972. The most recent counterexample appears to be 1968, when Nixon beat the more charismatic Hubert Humphrey. But when you examine that election, it tends to support the charisma theory more than contradict it. As Joe McGinnis recounts in his famous book _The Selling of the President 1968_, Nixon knew he had less charisma than Humphrey, and thus simply refused to debate him on TV. He knew he couldn't afford to let the two of them be seen side by side.

Now a candidate probably couldn't get away with refusing to debate. But in 1968 the custom of televised debates was still evolving. In effect, Nixon won in 1968 because voters were never allowed to see the real Nixon. All they saw were carefully scripted campaign spots.

Oddly enough, the most recent true counterexample is probably 1960. Though this election is usually given as an example of the power of TV, Kennedy apparently would not have won without fraud by party machines in Illinois and Texas. But TV was still young in 1960; only 87% of households had it. \[[3](#f3n)\] Undoubtedly TV helped Kennedy, so historians are correct in regarding this election as a watershed. TV required a new kind of candidate. There would be no more Calvin Coolidges.

The charisma theory may also explain why Democrats tend to lose presidential elections. The core of the Democrats' ideology seems to be a belief in government. Perhaps this tends to attract people who are earnest, but dull. Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry were so similar in that respect that they might have been brothers. Good thing for the Democrats that their screen lets through an occasional Clinton, even if some scandal results. \[[4](#f4n)\]

One would like to believe elections are won and lost on issues, if only fake ones like Willie Horton. And yet, if they are, we have a remarkable coincidence to explain. In every presidential election since TV became widespread, the apparently more charismatic candidate has won. Surprising, isn't it, that voters' opinions on the issues have lined up with charisma for 11 elections in a row?

The political commentators who come up with shifts to the left or right in their morning-after analyses are like the financial reporters stuck writing stories day after day about the random fluctuations of the stock market. Day