November 2004, corrected June 2006Occam's razor says we should prefer the simpler of two explanations.I begin by reminding readers of this principle because I'm aboutto propose a theory that will offend both liberals and conservatives.But Occam's razor means, in effect, that if you want to disagreewith 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 onecandidate beats another they look for political explanations. Thecountry is shifting to the left, or the right. And that sort ofshift can certainly be the result of a presidential election, whichmakes it easy to believe it was the cause.But when I think about why I voted for Clinton over the first GeorgeBush, it wasn't because I was shifting to the left. Clinton justseemed more dynamic. He seemed to want the job more. Bush seemedold and tired. I suspect it was the same for a lot of voters.Clinton didn't represent any national shift leftward.[1]He wasjust 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 sufferedproportionally. [2]Same story in 2004. Kerry was smarter and morearticulate than Bush, but rather a stiff. And Kerry lost.As I looked further back, I kept finding the same pattern. Pundits said Carter beat Fordbecause the country distrusted the Republicans after Watergate.And yet it also happened that Carter was famous for his big grinand folksy ways, and Ford for being a boring klutz. Four yearslater, pundits said the country had lurched to the right. ButReagan, a former actor, also happened to be even more charismaticthan Carter (whose grin was somewhat less cheery after four stressfulyears in office). In 1984 the charisma gap between Reagan andMondale was like that between Clinton and Dole, with similar results.The first George Bush managed to win in 1988, though he would laterbe vanquished by one of the most charismatic presidents ever, becausein 1988 he was up against the notoriously uncharismaticMichael Dukakis.These are the elections I remember personally, but apparently thesame pattern played out in 1964 and 1972. The most recentcounterexample appears to be 1968, when Nixon beat the more charismatic HubertHumphrey. But when you examine that election, it tends to supportthe charisma theory more than contradict it. As Joe McGinnisrecounts in his famous book The Selling of the President 1968,Nixon knew he had less charisma than Humphrey, and thus simplyrefused to debate him on TV. He knew he couldn't afford to let thetwo 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. Ineffect, Nixon won in 1968 because voters were never allowed to seethe real Nixon. All they saw were carefully scripted campaignspots.Oddly enough, the most recent true counterexample is probably 1960.Though this election is usually given as an example of the powerof TV, Kennedy apparently would not have won without fraud by partymachines in Illinois and Texas. But TV was still young in 1960;only 87% of households had it.[3]Undoubtedly TV helped Kennedy,so historians are correct in regarding this election as awatershed. TV required a new kind of candidate. There would be nomore Calvin Coolidges.The charisma theory may also explain why Democrats tend to losepresidential elections. The core of the Democrats' ideology seemsto be a belief in government. Perhaps this tends to attract peoplewho are earnest, but dull. Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry were so similarin that respect that they might have been brothers. Good thing forthe Democrats that their screen lets through an occasional Clinton,even if some scandal results. [4]One would like to believe elections are won and lost on issues, ifonly fake ones like Willie Horton. And yet, if they are, we havea remarkable coincidence to explain. In every presidential electionsince TV became widespread, the apparently more charismatic candidatehas won. Surprising, isn't it, that voters' opinions on the issueshave lined up with charisma for 11 elections in a row?The political commentators who come up with shifts to the left orright in their morning-after analyses are like the financial reportersstuck writing stories day after day about the random fluctuationsof the stock market. Day ends, market closes up or down, reporterlooks for good or bad news respectively, and writes that the marketwas up on news of Intel's earnings, or down on fears of instabilityin the Middle East. Suppose we could somehow feed these reportersfalse information about market closes, but give them all the othernews intact. Does anyone believe they would notice the anomaly,and not simply write that stocks were up (or down) on whatever good(or bad) news there was that day? That they would say, hey, waita minute, how can stocks be up with all this unrest in the MiddleEast?I'm not saying that issues don't matter to voters. Of course theydo. But the major parties know so well which issues matter howmuch to how many voters, and adjust their message so precisely inresponse, that they tend to split the difference on the issues,leaving the election to be decided by the one factor they can'tcontrol: charisma.If the Democrats had been running a candidate as charismatic asClinton in the 2004 election, he'd have won. And we'd be readingthat the election was a referendum on the war in Iraq, instead ofthat the Democrats are out of touch with evangelical Christians inmiddle America.During the 1992 election, the Clinton campaign staff had a big signin their office saying "It's the economy, stupid." Perhaps it waseven simpler than they thought.PostscriptOpinions seem to be divided about the charisma theory. Some sayit's impossible, others say it's obvious. This seems a good sign.Perhaps it's in the sweet spot midway between.As for it being impossible, I reply: here's the data; here's thetheory; theory explains data 100%. To a scientist, at least, thatmeans it deserves attention, however implausible it seems.You can't believe voters are so superficial that they just choosethe most charismatic guy? My theory doesn't require that. I'm notproposing that charisma is the only factor, just that it's the onlyone left after the efforts of the two parties cancel oneanother out.As for the theory being obvious, as far as I know, no one hasproposed it before. Election forecasters are proud when they canachieve the same results with much more complicated models.Finally, to the people who say that the theory is probably true,but rather depressing: it's not so bad as it seems. The phenomenonis like a pricing anomaly; once people realize it's there, it willdisappear. Once both parties realize it's a waste of time tonominate uncharismatic candidates, they'll tend to nominate onlythe most charismatic ones. And if the candidates are equallycharismatic, charisma will cancel out, and elections will be decidedon issues, as political commentators like to think they are now.Notes[1]As Clinton himself discovered to his surprise when, in one ofhis first acts as president, he tried to shift the military leftward.After a bruising fight he escaped with a face-saving compromise.[2]True, Gore won the popular vote. But politicians know the electoralvote decides the election, so that's what they campaign for. If Bushhad been campaigning for the popular vote he would presumably havegot more of it. (Thanks to judgmentalist for this point.)[3]Source: Nielsen Media Research. Of the remaining 13%, 11 didn'thave TV because they couldn't afford it. I'd argue that the missing11% were probably also the 11% most susceptible to charisma.[4]One implication of this theory is that parties shouldn't be tooquick to reject candidates with skeletons in their closets.Charismatic candidates will tend to have more skeletons than squeakyclean dullards, but in practice that doesn't seem to lose elections.The current Bush, for example, probably did more drugs in histwenties than any preceding president, and yet managed to get electedwith a base of evangelical Christians. All you have to do is sayyou've reformed, and stonewall about the details.Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Maria Daniels, Jessica Livingston,Jackie McDonough, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this, andto Eric Raymond for pointing out that I was wrong about 1968.Comment on this essay.
