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What Charisma Is
- xirium 19y agoThe book Freakonomics has similar sentiments about charismatic politicians and has supporting evidence.
- mixmax 19y agoI think the article is spot on, and I think it is a huge problem for American politics. What do you get when you pick the most charismatic leader to run your country? Well, you could get anything. I hear that Hitler was pretty charismatic. It is often easier seeing this from the outside, so coming from Europe this seems obvious and I have often discussed it with friends and colleagues. The thing is that what this means is that candidates are not picked on basis of their beliefs, their knolwedge or their political standpoints, but on how they appear on television. And I think that the American education system is to blame. There are a lot of really smart people in America - but unfortunately there are also a lot of uneducated people that are easy to deceive simply because they have never learnt to look at an issue with critical eyes. They tend to pick the guy that is charismatic, not really caring or being able to dissect the issues behind the smile. I come from an European country with an excellent (compared to America at least) education system, that makes sure that even people on the lowest rung of the social ladder have a critical eye for what political candidates and parties really stand for as opposed to how charismatic the candidate happens to be. Indeed some of our candidates are right out ugly and have no charisma whatsoever. But they know their stuff. And they get elected on basis of their standpoints, not their looks. If you don't believe me look at this guy that won a landslide victory years ago. http://listan.blogg.se/images/glistrup1_1139332224.jpg http://listan.blogg.se/images/glistrup1_1139332224.jpg Ugly as hell, but one of the most intelligent people in the country.