November 2004, corrected June 2006  
  
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] 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] 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]
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]  
  
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
ends, market closes up or down, reporter looks for good or bad news
respectively, and writes that the market was up on news of Intel's earnings,
or down on fears of instability in the Middle East. Suppose we could somehow
feed these reporters false information about market closes, but give them all
the other news 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, wait a minute, how can stocks be
up with all this unrest in the Middle East?  
  
I'm not saying that issues don't matter to voters. Of course they do. But the
major parties know so well which issues matter how much to how many voters,
and adjust their message so precisely in response, that they tend to split the
difference on the issues, leaving the election to be decided by the one factor
they can't control: charisma.  
  
If the Democrats had been running a candidate as charismatic as Clinton in the
2004 election, he'd have won. And we'd be reading that the election was a
referendum on the war in Iraq, instead of that the Democrats are out of touch
with evangelical Christians in middle America.  
  
During the 1992 election, the Clinton campaign staff had a big sign in their
office saying "It's the economy, stupid." Perhaps it was even simpler than
they thought.  
  
  
  
  
  
**Postscript**  
  
Opinions seem to be divided about the charisma theory. Some say it'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 the theory;
theory explains data 100%. To a scientist, at least, that means it deserves
attention, however implausible it seems.  
  
You can't believe voters are so superficial that they just choose the most
charismatic guy? My theory doesn't require that. I'm not proposing that
charisma is the only factor, just that it's the only one _left_ after the
efforts of the two parties cancel one another out.  
  
As for the theory being obvious, as far as I know, no one has proposed it
before. Election forecasters are proud when they can achieve 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 phenomenon is like a pricing
anomaly; once people realize it's there, it will disappear. Once both parties
realize it's a waste of time to nominate uncharismatic candidates, they'll
tend to nominate only the most charismatic ones. And if the candidates are
equally charismatic, charisma will cancel out, and elections will be decided
on issues, as political commentators like to think they are now.  
  
  
  
**Notes**  
  
[1] As Clinton himself discovered to his surprise when, in one of his 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 electoral vote
decides the election, so that's what they campaign for. If Bush had been
campaigning for the popular vote he would presumably have got more of it.
(Thanks to judgmentalist for this point.)  
  
[3] Source: Nielsen Media Research. Of the remaining 13%, 11 didn't have TV
because they couldn't afford it. I'd argue that the missing 11% were probably
also the 11% most susceptible to charisma.  
  
[4] One implication of this theory is that parties shouldn't be too quick to
reject candidates with skeletons in their closets. Charismatic candidates will
tend to have more skeletons than squeaky clean dullards, but in practice that
doesn't seem to lose elections. The current Bush, for example, probably did
more drugs in his twenties than any preceding president, and yet managed to
get elected with a base of evangelical Christians. All you have to do is say
you'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, and to Eric Raymond
for pointing out that I was wrong about 1968.  
  
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