26 ms·

It's Charisma, Stupid (2004)

92 points by jackweirdy 10y ago

m52go 10y ago
> Theory: In US presidential elections, the more charismatic candidate wins. I wonder if Trump is considered to have charisma. Either way, it's worth mentioning that Trump's real trump card is his masterful ability to reframe debates. Witness: his stances on women, risky politics, and immigration. Clinton is reacting to each of these topics right now, and in very weak ways (e.g., her woman's card tweet [0], also claiming she's better because she's a woman). Trump will DOMINATE her if this trend continues. I don't agree with everything Scott Adams says regarding Trump's campaign, as much of it is way too far-fetched, but his commentary regarding Trump's reframing is spot-on. [0] https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/726220886454468609 https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/726220886454468609
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  her woman's card tweet [0] I honestly couldn't tell if that was some kind of Joe Job. I'm still not sure I understand. The pink "Woman Card" was presented in an NYT ad yesterday as a perfectly straight, well-polished and unironic appeal to donors. Most offensive thing I've ever seen in a mainstream news outlet. What in the world is she thinking? This is not how you "get in front of the story." This is how you get in front of a bulldozer.
  - praneshp 10y ago
    Could you tell me why you feel so? Your parent was deriding that tweet as well. It's definitely cringe-y, but why/how would the media/others tear it apart?
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      I guess I'd put it this way, at the risk of undermining my own point: appealing to group identity is demeaning to us all as individuals, and perhaps to women most of all. The air of entitlement associated with a statement like "Vote for me because I'm a female" is very hard to get past. That's why I was hoping that the "Woman Card" was some kind of ironic in-joke. And it sounds like that's the case, intended to play off an offensive statement from the Trump camp. But if so, what's it doing at the top of the NYT home page?
      - MaysonL 10y ago
        What is it doing at the top of the NYT home page? For how long? Looking at the NYT home page now, there's a Prince story, and under "Election 2016" there are these headlines With Trump in Charge, G.O.P. Has a Day of Reckoning Reaching Out, Quietly, to G.O.P. Establishment The Republican Horse Race Is Over, and Journalism Lost
        CamperBob2 10y ago
        It was an ad, so no, I wouldn't expect you to see it at any given arbitrary moment in time.
      - chongli 10y ago
        Trump does little else but play identity politics. Clinton is betting Don't Pass/Don't Come, that's all.
- notliketherest 10y ago
  The article begs not the question "Does Trump have charisma", but rather, "Does Trump have more charisma than Clinton"? Personally I think yes - Clinton does seem old and tired and Trump certainly brings a dynamism unmatched by any other candidate. Clinton comes with a 7 point plan - Trump comes with an unabashed baller status and beautiful women around him. In the context of this article, I do think it's Trump with the upper hand.
  - vasilipupkin 10y ago
    I think this article is a good example of statistical prognosticating with too few data points, which renders statistical significance of the forecast to be quite low. In addition, it attempts to build what essentially amounts to a one variable model, which is likely to be suboptimal, even if that one variable is important. In short, I find this article to be an example of poorly done statistical analysis and not much more than that.
  - johnchristopher 10y ago
    > The article begs not the question "Does Trump have charisma", but rather, "Does Trump have more charisma than Clinton"? I think the question, the framing, is loaded. « Who has the kind of charisma that seduce/attract most people ? » would be a better question in my opinion.
- kelukelugames 10y ago
  We might not like Trump, but he is charismatic. I don't know if he's on the same level as Bill Clinton[1] or Obama, though "Make America great again" is the same slogan as "hope and change." They are both vague enough to inspire anyone, kind of like horoscopes. Scott Adams is not wrong, but I am surprised that people learn from reading his blog because non of Trump's tactics are new. To give Adams credit, he is a great blogger. Adams lures readers with "Let me share Trump's secrets with you because only us smart people know what is happening." People love to feel smart and be part of an exclusive group so they quote Adams' simple analysis as amazing insight. Also Adams fails to acknowledge that Trump overtly appeals to misogyny, racism, and xenophobia. Trump wouldn't be this popular without scapegoats. On a personal level, I feel depressed that a candidate will get more votes, not fewer, after making blatantly sexist comments. [1] Clinton during his candidacy: https://youtu.be/ckHfgqK_hcU?t=10m30s https://youtu.be/ckHfgqK_hcU?t=10m30s Notice the difference between Bill and Hilary near the end.
  - encoderer 10y ago
    Worth mentioning, for any who don't know: "Make America Great Again" was lifted wholesale from the Reagan campaign. I haven't verified it, but I read that he trademarked it soon after Romney lost in 2012.
  - the_cat_kittles 10y ago
    not sure why your getting lots of downvotes, i think your take on adams is pretty good. i was reading scott adams for a while as im sure lots of people were when trump was rising. i kept reading for a while and kept on seeing things that were just really stupid to me. he seems to think because he is a "master persuader" that he knows more about _everything_ than everyone else, but in one post he ventured in the realm of statistics and made some _incredibly ignorant_ arguments. then i saw old posts where he had just as confidently predicted herman cain. so part of what he is doing is just playing a long game, calling unlikely things so that when one of them eventually happens, he looks smart. i dont deny he has interesting insights, but he is wayyyyyy to high on himself and his special little lens. when he posted on twitter that he could convince anyone to vote for trump in 1 hour, i had to unfollow. i think manipulators are seen as smart by some people because they can be effective, but i have two points that seem to be forgotten: most of the time you eventually catch on to manipulators, and so they stop being effective, and, _more importantly_ they are just assholes. so, i say that it doesnt take intelligence to manipulate and bully and lie, it just takes gall. or heartlessness. as an analogy, i bet some of the lawyers who came up with the idea for ambulance chasing, or bankers who repackaged shitty subprime loans probably that they were really smart, when maybe it was just that there arent that many people willing to go that low.
- davemel37 10y ago
  > I wonder if Trump is considered to have charisma. I think PG is onto something, but mislabeled it. Brands win elections and Charisma is a great way to build a stronger presence in peoples minds. Trump is winning because he owns a place in every single voters mind, he is familiar and therefore relevant. All consumers and voters make emotional decisions and than support them with logic afterwards. Politics is no different, people emotionally (subconsciously) decide who they like the most and than find the logical positions to convince themselves. This is human nature, logic follows will. Trump is winning because he has a more memorable brand than any other candidate. Clinton is winning because she also has a very memorable brand. My gut tells me that Clintons brand beats trump in a political context, but I am not sure.
  - moridinamael 10y ago
    I mean, that's going to vary person-to-person. When I query my emotional sense of Clinton, I get back stuff like: liar, unhealthy, bloodthirsty, fake, robotic. Admittedly, probably 100% of these words have been "Incepted" into me, but that doesn't stop them from being there. In contrast, my Trump emotional reactions go more like: winner, famous, gold, smiling, dominant. Again, I'm not proud of it, but that's the kind of pre-rational slant I have to essentially fight against when trying to evaluate the candidates logically.
- PavlovsCat 10y ago
  I think Sanders has more charisma than both. Why is he getting such a blank out in the media and social media? Are people seriously considering Clinton, just because the establishment just pretends like she's the only real democratic candidate? Disclaimer I don't live in the US, that's just the impression I get. But I certainly notice discussions in lots of places simply pretending Sanders doesn't exist, which considering what I see when I actively pay attention to stuff around him, does surprise me, to say the least.
  - ccvannorman 10y ago
    He didn't pay the entrance fee. Most media is owned by a few corporations who are closely tied with Hillary. Don't worry though, I'm sure that won't affect her policy decisions..
    - mistermann 10y ago
      This is the correct answer, it was blatantly obvious he was being ignored by the media until he became too big to ignore. I haven't read any mathematical theory on how costly this was to his campaign, if anyone knows of one please link it.
  - kelukelugames 10y ago
    Is Sanders benefiting from the halo effect? I'm apolitical and the few times I've seen Sanders on TV, I didn't get that impression.
    - PavlovsCat 10y ago
      > the few times I've seen Sanders on TV Well, that's my point, that's passively. It's not like he's not getting reported on, of course, but kinda like the bare minimum. I found this speech after the Indiana win very interesting for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fHjiYU6RQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fHjiYU6RQw I don't mean charismatic as in super suave, but as in, a stand up normal person, not someone first and foremost in it for the power. I guess charisma is subjective. And he isn't trying to be anything he's not. He's not trying to be folksy, he's just himself. That's what I see and what I like. Sure he has to play politics, but he doesn't put on a mask on top of that.
- rurban 10y ago
  Of course Trump wins on the charisma level. Not over Sanders, but over Clinton for sure, and it looks like Sanders has no chance. This is now the perfect time that this theory can be disproved.
return0 10y ago
Is Trump considered charismatic? Doesnt seem to fit the definition.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jqm 10y ago
  That probably depends on who you ask.
  - return0 10y ago
    Maybe incendiary, but very little charisma . More than all the other candidates, incl. hillary , but still vanishingly little of it. But we dont live in a world of charismatic leaders. Obama is probably the most charismatic of all, and that's telling.
    - ktRolster 10y ago
      Good point: if charisma won elections, our actors would be our politicians.
- coderdude 10y ago
  I don't consider him charismatic but I am excited to see him win the election. The reason his character appeals to me becomes clear when he is being interviewed in the media. They seem so fake, polished and conditioned. He does not. Juxtaposed to members of the media, to me, he seems like myself. I've always had the impression that the people I see in the media are completely fake and do not represent actual human beings. Other presidential candidates are just like those people to me. They won't say anything that will upset you. They go with whatever the current flow is. Whatever narrative the nation is supposed to follow at the moment. It's the same way I feel when reading comments on the net, including on HN. The character Trump represents appeals to me because he seems to see through the kind of bullshit that I feel like I'm seeing through as well.
  - 10y ago
ryandamm 10y ago
Keep in mind that most prognostication re: the Trump campaign has failed. That's the trouble with inductive models; there's always the potential for some event that could happen that hasn't happened yet, and it breaks your model. It's possible Trump falls into that category; 'charismatic' by some ill-defined measure, but unelectable (in the general election).
encoderer 10y ago
I want to nod along with this, but I can't shake the feeling that it's just too simplistic, with too small of a dataset. So Johnson was supposedly more charismatic than Goldwater, and that's why he won, not because Kennedy had been murdered 11 months earlier? Nixon beat Humphrey because he avoided a heads-up showdown, not because Humphrey had just served as Johnson's yes-man for several unpopular years in Vietnam? Carter beat Ford because he was charismatic, not because Ford pardoned Nixon and pissed everybody off? Reagan won because of his charisma, not because the country was mired in a years-long hostage crisis? Bush the First's loss didn't have anything to do with the worst recession in a decade? Al Gore and John Kerry... I'll give you those, and it's not surprising then that he wrote this article in 2004, but I think in other instances it's curve-fitting.
- programmer1234 10y ago
  I don't think PG is making an empirical argument, it's based on intuition and then tries to just offer a few instances that are at least nominally consistent with the idea. Nate Silver recently said about Trump, "voters are much more tribal than I thought", and if you assume most voters don't know anything about candidates other than "it's a guy on the TV", they wouldn't respond to whether this guy was a yes man for Johnson or whatever, they just respond to who they like the most on an emotional level, and that's going to be whoever is the most charismatic during their campaign.
  - moridinamael 10y ago
    Nate Silver is what would happen if a really smart Vulcan came to Earth and tried to understand and predict human behavior.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  Carter beat Ford because he was charismatic Actually Ford looked clumsy because he fell down a lot...president clumsy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlz0he9rtKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlz0he9rtKw
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
cromwellian 10y ago
The model is too simplistic. Human beings are also tribal and creatures of habit as well. We tend to vote for our party, those we've voted for in the past, and/or people who are like us. In fact, the fact that only 11-12 states are up for grabs and the rest are solidly Democratic or Republican shows that charisma doesn't matter for most of the electoral. It may be a weighted factor in those cross section of voters who are independents and willing to cross political lines. Is Trump really charismatic, or is he saying things the electorate wants to hear, by promising everything under the sun, with no plan and no explanation, and blaming problems on foreigners and minorities. Xenophobia can also be a powerful factor. IMHO, Hillary is going to beat Trump in the general election, however if there's a major terrorist attack on US soil, we could be looking at President Trump.
- kelukelugames 10y ago
  Those things are not mutually exclusive. Demagogue are charming.
- joslin01 10y ago
  > Human beings are also tribal And who's usually the most powerful in a tribe? The most charismatic. Many voters will change positions, so if you're looking to apply tribal theory upon voter preference, that just takes into account the people who already had their minds mostly made up. The swing votes is the deciding factor, and what are some attributes of swing voters? If they aren't die-hard republicans/democrats, they might be ambivalent or outright disinterested in politics. Who do you think would sway them? The fact-listing robot or the guy who says he's gonna change the world? Was Bernie just saying what people want as well? Yes and no. Do you think a robot would win that listed off everything that the electorate "wants to hear"? Maybe. It depends on how much you trust the robot to get the job done, doesn't it? Well, the human is also trying to evaluate this potential leader and besides already being charmed by the charisma, the human also views charisma as an attribute of the strong and capable.
davemel37 10y ago
> 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. People have been saying for ages that the politician that wins is the one who you can envision yourself having a beer with. Sounds to me like the exact theory he presents.
ronilan 10y ago
"Occam's razor says we should prefer the simpler of two explanations." Theory: In US presidential elections, the candidate who wins Ohio wins the elections. "Oddly enough, the most recent true counterexample is probably 1960." http://i1.wp.com/metrocosm.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/presidential-election-results-1952-2012.png http://i1.wp.com/metrocosm.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pr... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/22iht-letter22.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/22iht-letter22.html?_r=...
- DenisM 10y ago
  I believe you were looking for this? https://xkcd.com/1122/ https://xkcd.com/1122/
  - yongjik 10y ago
    The alt text is golden: "No white guy who's been mentioned on Twitter has gone on to win." ...and the streak may continue all the way to 2016!
Eliezer 10y ago
It's not hard to imagine a future writer looking back and saying, "Of course Trump lost the election, he was no Kennedy or Obama and widely hated - a clear example of the rule!"
- callmeed 10y ago
  It's not any harder to imagine the opposite IMO. I'd argue Trump is charismatic to many and Hilary really isn't. https://www.quora.com/Is-Donald-Trump-charismatic https://www.quora.com/Is-Donald-Trump-charismatic
jljljl 10y ago
Perfect. And since charisma is in the eye of the beholder, or defined by popular opinion, this can never be wrong. E.g., see how no one in these comments can agree on which candidate is more charismatic. Addendum: In elections, the most popular candidate wins.
- jackweirdy 10y ago
  PG has already addressed that: http://paulgraham.com/recharisma.html http://paulgraham.com/recharisma.html
  - JamesBlair 10y ago
    >This may change if charisma starts to be perceived as the key to winning. So, in other words, this submission is a survey of the people who don't want Trump to win?
  - jimbokun 10y ago
    "Kennedy was the same way. He couldn't bear to be alone." But Reagan and Obama are both famously introverted, while still considered very charismatic.
- joslin01 10y ago
  Man A walks into a bar and says hi to a stranger, and then tells a joke and then winds up telling a story and somehow by the end he got to know 5 people there and they all really liked him. Man B just went and sat at the bar. Do you mean to tell me it is "popular opinion" that ascribes Man A as charismatic in this scenario? Addendum: I've heard it said that when you're talking to Bill Clinton, he makes you feel like you're the center of the world.
  - lmm 10y ago
    > Do you mean to tell me it is "popular opinion" that ascribes Man A as charismatic in this scenario? Is the concept of "charisma" meaningful here? Does it have any explanatory power? Or is it just functioning as another word for popular, and we're just saying that more popular people are more popular?
awinter-py 10y ago
Etymology of 'charisma' is fascinating. This wasn't a concept western society had before weber liberated it from religious usage in the late 1800s; after that it entered historiography as an explanation (or perhaps just a description) of leadership ability that can't be explained in objective terms. Not sure words like this aid our understanding of situations.
ktRolster 10y ago
In my estimation, Sanders is much more charismatic than Clinton.
hyperliner 10y ago
Charisma is defined as "compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others." It seems, just based on that and ignoring electoral map complexities, that PG predicts that Trump will be the next President.
- Retra 10y ago
  Most people I've met find Trump repulsive, not charming. Interesting, yes. As a political entity. I mean, people tend to like the smell of their own flatulence too, but that doesn't mean they're going to wear it as perfume.
  - hyperliner 10y ago
    >>> "people tend to like the smell of their own flatulence too" speak for yourself
coderdude 10y ago
I vouched for this because, barring any other knowledge of your account(s) prior to the comments made on this account, I have not seen anything that, to me, merits the suppression.
- dang 10y ago
  That's a fine use of vouching, but we detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633621 and marked it off-topic.
  - coderdude 10y ago
    Ah good. I was wondering if I handled that right. I wasn't prepared to add a comment after vouching so that caught me off guard. Took it as my time to explain why. To be clear, in the future I don't explain the vouching. Which I understand.
HillaryBriss 10y ago
I just don't think he'll win. So, as for charisma winning presidential elections, could it be that Trump is the exception that proves the rule? I mean, when did Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Obama or even Dubya overtly and explicitly offend large fractions of the electorate with a seemingly unending barrage of careless and rude statements? Trump may have charisma, but it's coupled with an extreme talent for pissing people off.
mc32 10y ago
If we apply the Charisma Man[1] concept, it says that the most charismatic would be an outsider of whom the insiders know little and thus his/her faults don't translate into their context as shortcomings. In this case Trump's brashness and unfiltered style is an asset rather than a drawback compared to how those characteristics would wear on an insider candidate. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charisma_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charisma_Man
Hondor 10y ago
Maybe it's the sequence he presented it, but something sound incredibly wrong about this line of thinking: 1) Here's my simple theory (the more charismatic wins). 2) Here's all this data to support it. 3) Here's some data that seems to contradict it (Nixon vs Humphry) so now I'll tack on an exception so that it actually agrees with my now more complex theory (the more charismatic wins unless the other one limits their media appearances). If you stop and exclude case where a "carefully scripted campaign spot" means the less charismatic can win, then not only do you have to investigate every other election to see if the less charismatic candidate also carefully scripted their campaign spots, but you've also data dredged to find that specific type of exception in the first place. Sure, now your theory fits all the historical data, but if you try to use it next election and it fails, you can tack on yet another exception and still claim that it's right. "Oh, this one didn't count because of [new reason I though of after the fact]."
- basicplus2 10y ago
  it seems to work for climate "science"..
  - Hondor 10y ago
    It's hard for the layman to see any science happening with climate science. All we hear is predictions that have already come true before they were made, vague unfalsifiable predictions for the near future and the more concrete predictions for so far in the future that we haven't had a chance to test them yet. Maybe we can trust that climate scientists somehow blinded themselves to recent data while making their models, then wrote up or even published their predictions before unblinding themselves and saying "Wow, it turned out to be right!". But we don't hear much about those important methodological details in the popular press. We don't hear about the track record of correct vs incorrect predictions. Each side of the debate only skews it to serve its own interests. For example, I recently read a story on a pro climate change website listing many failures of previous climate predictions. However every single failure was one where it turned out the effect was greater than predicted, never smaller. Thus serving the goal of scaring people. That's probably not really a fair showing of all predictions.
zby 10y ago
Hmm - so what he says is that the charisma of US presidents can only grow?
tim333 10y ago
Charisma is no doubt a factor and you could probably explain Trump making it to Republican Candidate that way but I don't think he'll beat Hillary in spite of being more charismatic. Occam's razor says favour the simplest explanation and I think here that would be voters weigh a few factors including charisma and policy. As an aside I bet on Trump at 11:1 based Scott Adams hypothesis but plan to cover at 2:1 (on Betfair).
gregpilling 10y ago
Max Weber is the father of sociology and famous for his Charismatic Authority model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_authority
padobson 10y ago
I think I'd add another layer to this: Charisma wins undecided voters, and undecided voters win elections. ~60% of the country (~30% GOP, ~30% Dem) vote along party lines. It's the ~30% in the middle that decide elections, and I'd say they go with the more charismatic candidate. I think we'll get a good test in this election. I'd say Hillary is above average when compared to Presidential candidates, but Donald Trump has basically built his campaign on his personality. It's going to be a landmark issues vs. personality election.
simonebrunozzi 10y ago
Using Occam's razor: the candidate with the biggest budget wins. Now try to disprove that.
jimbokun 10y ago
How does the fact Al Gore won the popular vote affect this analysis?
- ferentchak 10y ago
  From the Article "[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.)"
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
Would be more impressive with a definition of charisma. So I'll offer one - "charisma" makes voters (who are individually irrelevant) feel like important players the candidate really cares about. It's simple demagoguery and flattery. Conversely, when voters feel their craven prejudices are being ignored for rational policy reasons, they feel excluded and marginalised. The conclusion is that most voters are like children who can be bought by a reassuring pat on the head to make them feel like mommy and daddy love them, and a promise of sweets after. This is literally why we can't have nice things. Democracy needs adult policies debated rationally by adults. If most voters can't make decisions in an adult way, they're easy prey for the grinning sharks who end up running things.
- ribs 10y ago
  I profoundly agree and note that voting (at least in any reasonably-sized electorate) is an inherently irrational act, and so the barrier to good judgment is high. It's inherently irrational because one's vote will almost certainly never decide an election. Everyone intuits this fact. Even though they may consider themselves to be performing a civic duty, they will always be subject to s host of other reasons for voting as they do, reasons other than pure consequentialist thinking.

92 points by jackweirdy 10y ago

m52go 10y ago

> Theory: In US presidential elections, the more charismatic candidate wins. I wonder if Trump is considered to have charisma. Either way, it's worth mentioning that Trump's real trump card is his masterful ability to reframe debates. Witness: his stances on women, risky politics, and immigration. Clinton is reacting to each of these topics right now, and in very weak ways (e.g., her woman's card tweet [0], also claiming she's better because she's a woman). Trump will DOMINATE her if this trend continues. I don't agree with everything Scott Adams says regarding Trump's campaign, as much of it is way too far-fetched, but his commentary regarding Trump's reframing is spot-on. [0] https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/726220886454468609 https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/726220886454468609

CamperBob2 10y ago
her woman's card tweet [0] I honestly couldn't tell if that was some kind of Joe Job. I'm still not sure I understand. The pink "Woman Card" was presented in an NYT ad yesterday as a perfectly straight, well-polished and unironic appeal to donors. Most offensive thing I've ever seen in a mainstream news outlet. What in the world is she thinking? This is not how you "get in front of the story." This is how you get in front of a bulldozer.
- praneshp 10y ago
  Could you tell me why you feel so? Your parent was deriding that tweet as well. It's definitely cringe-y, but why/how would the media/others tear it apart?
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    I guess I'd put it this way, at the risk of undermining my own point: appealing to group identity is demeaning to us all as individuals, and perhaps to women most of all. The air of entitlement associated with a statement like "Vote for me because I'm a female" is very hard to get past. That's why I was hoping that the "Woman Card" was some kind of ironic in-joke. And it sounds like that's the case, intended to play off an offensive statement from the Trump camp. But if so, what's it doing at the top of the NYT home page?
    - MaysonL 10y ago
      What is it doing at the top of the NYT home page? For how long? Looking at the NYT home page now, there's a Prince story, and under "Election 2016" there are these headlines With Trump in Charge, G.O.P. Has a Day of Reckoning Reaching Out, Quietly, to G.O.P. Establishment The Republican Horse Race Is Over, and Journalism Lost
      - CamperBob2 10y ago
        It was an ad, so no, I wouldn't expect you to see it at any given arbitrary moment in time.
    - chongli 10y ago
      Trump does little else but play identity politics. Clinton is betting Don't Pass/Don't Come, that's all.
notliketherest 10y ago
The article begs not the question "Does Trump have charisma", but rather, "Does Trump have more charisma than Clinton"? Personally I think yes - Clinton does seem old and tired and Trump certainly brings a dynamism unmatched by any other candidate. Clinton comes with a 7 point plan - Trump comes with an unabashed baller status and beautiful women around him. In the context of this article, I do think it's Trump with the upper hand.
- vasilipupkin 10y ago
  I think this article is a good example of statistical prognosticating with too few data points, which renders statistical significance of the forecast to be quite low. In addition, it attempts to build what essentially amounts to a one variable model, which is likely to be suboptimal, even if that one variable is important. In short, I find this article to be an example of poorly done statistical analysis and not much more than that.
- johnchristopher 10y ago
  > The article begs not the question "Does Trump have charisma", but rather, "Does Trump have more charisma than Clinton"? I think the question, the framing, is loaded. « Who has the kind of charisma that seduce/attract most people ? » would be a better question in my opinion.
kelukelugames 10y ago
We might not like Trump, but he is charismatic. I don't know if he's on the same level as Bill Clinton[1] or Obama, though "Make America great again" is the same slogan as "hope and change." They are both vague enough to inspire anyone, kind of like horoscopes. Scott Adams is not wrong, but I am surprised that people learn from reading his blog because non of Trump's tactics are new. To give Adams credit, he is a great blogger. Adams lures readers with "Let me share Trump's secrets with you because only us smart people know what is happening." People love to feel smart and be part of an exclusive group so they quote Adams' simple analysis as amazing insight. Also Adams fails to acknowledge that Trump overtly appeals to misogyny, racism, and xenophobia. Trump wouldn't be this popular without scapegoats. On a personal level, I feel depressed that a candidate will get more votes, not fewer, after making blatantly sexist comments. [1] Clinton during his candidacy: https://youtu.be/ckHfgqK_hcU?t=10m30s https://youtu.be/ckHfgqK_hcU?t=10m30s Notice the difference between Bill and Hilary near the end.
- encoderer 10y ago
  Worth mentioning, for any who don't know: "Make America Great Again" was lifted wholesale from the Reagan campaign. I haven't verified it, but I read that he trademarked it soon after Romney lost in 2012.
- the_cat_kittles 10y ago
  not sure why your getting lots of downvotes, i think your take on adams is pretty good. i was reading scott adams for a while as im sure lots of people were when trump was rising. i kept reading for a while and kept on seeing things that were just really stupid to me. he seems to think because he is a "master persuader" that he knows more about _everything_ than everyone else, but in one post he ventured in the realm of statistics and made some _incredibly ignorant_ arguments. then i saw old posts where he had just as confidently predicted herman cain. so part of what he is doing is just playing a long game, calling unlikely things so that when one of them eventually happens, he looks smart. i dont deny he has interesting insights, but he is wayyyyyy to high on himself and his special little lens. when he posted on twitter that he could convince anyone to vote for trump in 1 hour, i had to unfollow. i think manipulators are seen as smart by some people because they can be effective, but i have two points that seem to be forgotten: most of the time you eventually catch on to manipulators, and so they stop being effective, and, _more importantly_ they are just assholes. so, i say that it doesnt take intelligence to manipulate and bully and lie, it just takes gall. or heartlessness. as an analogy, i bet some of the lawyers who came up with the idea for ambulance chasing, or bankers who repackaged shitty subprime loans probably that they were really smart, when maybe it was just that there arent that many people willing to go that low.
davemel37 10y ago
> I wonder if Trump is considered to have charisma. I think PG is onto something, but mislabeled it. Brands win elections and Charisma is a great way to build a stronger presence in peoples minds. Trump is winning because he owns a place in every single voters mind, he is familiar and therefore relevant. All consumers and voters make emotional decisions and than support them with logic afterwards. Politics is no different, people emotionally (subconsciously) decide who they like the most and than find the logical positions to convince themselves. This is human nature, logic follows will. Trump is winning because he has a more memorable brand than any other candidate. Clinton is winning because she also has a very memorable brand. My gut tells me that Clintons brand beats trump in a political context, but I am not sure.
- moridinamael 10y ago
  I mean, that's going to vary person-to-person. When I query my emotional sense of Clinton, I get back stuff like: liar, unhealthy, bloodthirsty, fake, robotic. Admittedly, probably 100% of these words have been "Incepted" into me, but that doesn't stop them from being there. In contrast, my Trump emotional reactions go more like: winner, famous, gold, smiling, dominant. Again, I'm not proud of it, but that's the kind of pre-rational slant I have to essentially fight against when trying to evaluate the candidates logically.
PavlovsCat 10y ago
I think Sanders has more charisma than both. Why is he getting such a blank out in the media and social media? Are people seriously considering Clinton, just because the establishment just pretends like she's the only real democratic candidate? Disclaimer I don't live in the US, that's just the impression I get. But I certainly notice discussions in lots of places simply pretending Sanders doesn't exist, which considering what I see when I actively pay attention to stuff around him, does surprise me, to say the least.
- ccvannorman 10y ago
  He didn't pay the entrance fee. Most media is owned by a few corporations who are closely tied with Hillary. Don't worry though, I'm sure that won't affect her policy decisions..
  - mistermann 10y ago
    This is the correct answer, it was blatantly obvious he was being ignored by the media until he became too big to ignore. I haven't read any mathematical theory on how costly this was to his campaign, if anyone knows of one please link it.
- kelukelugames 10y ago
  Is Sanders benefiting from the halo effect? I'm apolitical and the few times I've seen Sanders on TV, I didn't get that impression.
  - PavlovsCat 10y ago
    > the few times I've seen Sanders on TV Well, that's my point, that's passively. It's not like he's not getting reported on, of course, but kinda like the bare minimum. I found this speech after the Indiana win very interesting for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fHjiYU6RQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fHjiYU6RQw I don't mean charismatic as in super suave, but as in, a stand up normal person, not someone first and foremost in it for the power. I guess charisma is subjective. And he isn't trying to be anything he's not. He's not trying to be folksy, he's just himself. That's what I see and what I like. Sure he has to play politics, but he doesn't put on a mask on top of that.
rurban 10y ago
Of course Trump wins on the charisma level. Not over Sanders, but over Clinton for sure, and it looks like Sanders has no chance. This is now the perfect time that this theory can be disproved.

return0 10y ago

Is Trump considered charismatic? Doesnt seem to fit the definition.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jqm 10y ago
That probably depends on who you ask.
- return0 10y ago
  Maybe incendiary, but very little charisma . More than all the other candidates, incl. hillary , but still vanishingly little of it. But we dont live in a world of charismatic leaders. Obama is probably the most charismatic of all, and that's telling.
  - ktRolster 10y ago
    Good point: if charisma won elections, our actors would be our politicians.
coderdude 10y ago
I don't consider him charismatic but I am excited to see him win the election. The reason his character appeals to me becomes clear when he is being interviewed in the media. They seem so fake, polished and conditioned. He does not. Juxtaposed to members of the media, to me, he seems like myself. I've always had the impression that the people I see in the media are completely fake and do not represent actual human beings. Other presidential candidates are just like those people to me. They won't say anything that will upset you. They go with whatever the current flow is. Whatever narrative the nation is supposed to follow at the moment. It's the same way I feel when reading comments on the net, including on HN. The character Trump represents appeals to me because he seems to see through the kind of bullshit that I feel like I'm seeing through as well.
- 10y ago

ryandamm 10y ago

Keep in mind that most prognostication re: the Trump campaign has failed. That's the trouble with inductive models; there's always the potential for some event that could happen that hasn't happened yet, and it breaks your model. It's possible Trump falls into that category; 'charismatic' by some ill-defined measure, but unelectable (in the general election).

encoderer 10y ago

I want to nod along with this, but I can't shake the feeling that it's just too simplistic, with too small of a dataset. So Johnson was supposedly more charismatic than Goldwater, and that's why he won, not because Kennedy had been murdered 11 months earlier? Nixon beat Humphrey because he avoided a heads-up showdown, not because Humphrey had just served as Johnson's yes-man for several unpopular years in Vietnam? Carter beat Ford because he was charismatic, not because Ford pardoned Nixon and pissed everybody off? Reagan won because of his charisma, not because the country was mired in a years-long hostage crisis? Bush the First's loss didn't have anything to do with the worst recession in a decade? Al Gore and John Kerry... I'll give you those, and it's not surprising then that he wrote this article in 2004, but I think in other instances it's curve-fitting.

programmer1234 10y ago
I don't think PG is making an empirical argument, it's based on intuition and then tries to just offer a few instances that are at least nominally consistent with the idea. Nate Silver recently said about Trump, "voters are much more tribal than I thought", and if you assume most voters don't know anything about candidates other than "it's a guy on the TV", they wouldn't respond to whether this guy was a yes man for Johnson or whatever, they just respond to who they like the most on an emotional level, and that's going to be whoever is the most charismatic during their campaign.
- moridinamael 10y ago
  Nate Silver is what would happen if a really smart Vulcan came to Earth and tried to understand and predict human behavior.
ktRolster 10y ago
Carter beat Ford because he was charismatic Actually Ford looked clumsy because he fell down a lot...president clumsy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlz0he9rtKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlz0he9rtKw
brazzledazzle 10y ago

cromwellian 10y ago

The model is too simplistic. Human beings are also tribal and creatures of habit as well. We tend to vote for our party, those we've voted for in the past, and/or people who are like us. In fact, the fact that only 11-12 states are up for grabs and the rest are solidly Democratic or Republican shows that charisma doesn't matter for most of the electoral. It may be a weighted factor in those cross section of voters who are independents and willing to cross political lines. Is Trump really charismatic, or is he saying things the electorate wants to hear, by promising everything under the sun, with no plan and no explanation, and blaming problems on foreigners and minorities. Xenophobia can also be a powerful factor. IMHO, Hillary is going to beat Trump in the general election, however if there's a major terrorist attack on US soil, we could be looking at President Trump.

kelukelugames 10y ago
Those things are not mutually exclusive. Demagogue are charming.
joslin01 10y ago
> Human beings are also tribal And who's usually the most powerful in a tribe? The most charismatic. Many voters will change positions, so if you're looking to apply tribal theory upon voter preference, that just takes into account the people who already had their minds mostly made up. The swing votes is the deciding factor, and what are some attributes of swing voters? If they aren't die-hard republicans/democrats, they might be ambivalent or outright disinterested in politics. Who do you think would sway them? The fact-listing robot or the guy who says he's gonna change the world? Was Bernie just saying what people want as well? Yes and no. Do you think a robot would win that listed off everything that the electorate "wants to hear"? Maybe. It depends on how much you trust the robot to get the job done, doesn't it? Well, the human is also trying to evaluate this potential leader and besides already being charmed by the charisma, the human also views charisma as an attribute of the strong and capable.

davemel37 10y ago

> 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. People have been saying for ages that the politician that wins is the one who you can envision yourself having a beer with. Sounds to me like the exact theory he presents.

ronilan 10y ago

"Occam's razor says we should prefer the simpler of two explanations." Theory: In US presidential elections, the candidate who wins Ohio wins the elections. "Oddly enough, the most recent true counterexample is probably 1960." http://i1.wp.com/metrocosm.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/presidential-election-results-1952-2012.png http://i1.wp.com/metrocosm.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pr... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/22iht-letter22.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/22iht-letter22.html?_r=...

DenisM 10y ago
I believe you were looking for this? https://xkcd.com/1122/ https://xkcd.com/1122/
- yongjik 10y ago
  The alt text is golden: "No white guy who's been mentioned on Twitter has gone on to win." ...and the streak may continue all the way to 2016!

Eliezer 10y ago

It's not hard to imagine a future writer looking back and saying, "Of course Trump lost the election, he was no Kennedy or Obama and widely hated - a clear example of the rule!"

callmeed 10y ago
It's not any harder to imagine the opposite IMO. I'd argue Trump is charismatic to many and Hilary really isn't. https://www.quora.com/Is-Donald-Trump-charismatic https://www.quora.com/Is-Donald-Trump-charismatic

jljljl 10y ago

Perfect. And since charisma is in the eye of the beholder, or defined by popular opinion, this can never be wrong. E.g., see how no one in these comments can agree on which candidate is more charismatic. Addendum: In elections, the most popular candidate wins.

jackweirdy 10y ago
PG has already addressed that: http://paulgraham.com/recharisma.html http://paulgraham.com/recharisma.html
- JamesBlair 10y ago
  >This may change if charisma starts to be perceived as the key to winning. So, in other words, this submission is a survey of the people who don't want Trump to win?
- jimbokun 10y ago
  "Kennedy was the same way. He couldn't bear to be alone." But Reagan and Obama are both famously introverted, while still considered very charismatic.
joslin01 10y ago
Man A walks into a bar and says hi to a stranger, and then tells a joke and then winds up telling a story and somehow by the end he got to know 5 people there and they all really liked him. Man B just went and sat at the bar. Do you mean to tell me it is "popular opinion" that ascribes Man A as charismatic in this scenario? Addendum: I've heard it said that when you're talking to Bill Clinton, he makes you feel like you're the center of the world.
- lmm 10y ago
  > Do you mean to tell me it is "popular opinion" that ascribes Man A as charismatic in this scenario? Is the concept of "charisma" meaningful here? Does it have any explanatory power? Or is it just functioning as another word for popular, and we're just saying that more popular people are more popular?

awinter-py 10y ago

Etymology of 'charisma' is fascinating. This wasn't a concept western society had before weber liberated it from religious usage in the late 1800s; after that it entered historiography as an explanation (or perhaps just a description) of leadership ability that can't be explained in objective terms. Not sure words like this aid our understanding of situations.

ktRolster 10y ago

In my estimation, Sanders is much more charismatic than Clinton.

hyperliner 10y ago

Charisma is defined as "compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others." It seems, just based on that and ignoring electoral map complexities, that PG predicts that Trump will be the next President.

Retra 10y ago
Most people I've met find Trump repulsive, not charming. Interesting, yes. As a political entity. I mean, people tend to like the smell of their own flatulence too, but that doesn't mean they're going to wear it as perfume.
- hyperliner 10y ago
  >>> "people tend to like the smell of their own flatulence too" speak for yourself

coderdude 10y ago

I vouched for this because, barring any other knowledge of your account(s) prior to the comments made on this account, I have not seen anything that, to me, merits the suppression.

dang 10y ago
That's a fine use of vouching, but we detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633621 and marked it off-topic.
- coderdude 10y ago
  Ah good. I was wondering if I handled that right. I wasn't prepared to add a comment after vouching so that caught me off guard. Took it as my time to explain why. To be clear, in the future I don't explain the vouching. Which I understand.

HillaryBriss 10y ago

I just don't think he'll win. So, as for charisma winning presidential elections, could it be that Trump is the exception that proves the rule? I mean, when did Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Obama or even Dubya overtly and explicitly offend large fractions of the electorate with a seemingly unending barrage of careless and rude statements? Trump may have charisma, but it's coupled with an extreme talent for pissing people off.

mc32 10y ago

If we apply the Charisma Man[1] concept, it says that the most charismatic would be an outsider of whom the insiders know little and thus his/her faults don't translate into their context as shortcomings. In this case Trump's brashness and unfiltered style is an asset rather than a drawback compared to how those characteristics would wear on an insider candidate. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charisma_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charisma_Man

Hondor 10y ago

Maybe it's the sequence he presented it, but something sound incredibly wrong about this line of thinking: 1) Here's my simple theory (the more charismatic wins). 2) Here's all this data to support it. 3) Here's some data that seems to contradict it (Nixon vs Humphry) so now I'll tack on an exception so that it actually agrees with my now more complex theory (the more charismatic wins unless the other one limits their media appearances). If you stop and exclude case where a "carefully scripted campaign spot" means the less charismatic can win, then not only do you have to investigate every other election to see if the less charismatic candidate also carefully scripted their campaign spots, but you've also data dredged to find that specific type of exception in the first place. Sure, now your theory fits all the historical data, but if you try to use it next election and it fails, you can tack on yet another exception and still claim that it's right. "Oh, this one didn't count because of [new reason I though of after the fact]."

basicplus2 10y ago
it seems to work for climate "science"..
- Hondor 10y ago
  It's hard for the layman to see any science happening with climate science. All we hear is predictions that have already come true before they were made, vague unfalsifiable predictions for the near future and the more concrete predictions for so far in the future that we haven't had a chance to test them yet. Maybe we can trust that climate scientists somehow blinded themselves to recent data while making their models, then wrote up or even published their predictions before unblinding themselves and saying "Wow, it turned out to be right!". But we don't hear much about those important methodological details in the popular press. We don't hear about the track record of correct vs incorrect predictions. Each side of the debate only skews it to serve its own interests. For example, I recently read a story on a pro climate change website listing many failures of previous climate predictions. However every single failure was one where it turned out the effect was greater than predicted, never smaller. Thus serving the goal of scaring people. That's probably not really a fair showing of all predictions.

zby 10y ago

Hmm - so what he says is that the charisma of US presidents can only grow?

tim333 10y ago

Charisma is no doubt a factor and you could probably explain Trump making it to Republican Candidate that way but I don't think he'll beat Hillary in spite of being more charismatic. Occam's razor says favour the simplest explanation and I think here that would be voters weigh a few factors including charisma and policy. As an aside I bet on Trump at 11:1 based Scott Adams hypothesis but plan to cover at 2:1 (on Betfair).

gregpilling 10y ago

Max Weber is the father of sociology and famous for his Charismatic Authority model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_authority

padobson 10y ago

I think I'd add another layer to this: Charisma wins undecided voters, and undecided voters win elections. ~60% of the country (~30% GOP, ~30% Dem) vote along party lines. It's the ~30% in the middle that decide elections, and I'd say they go with the more charismatic candidate. I think we'll get a good test in this election. I'd say Hillary is above average when compared to Presidential candidates, but Donald Trump has basically built his campaign on his personality. It's going to be a landmark issues vs. personality election.

simonebrunozzi 10y ago

Using Occam's razor: the candidate with the biggest budget wins. Now try to disprove that.

jimbokun 10y ago

How does the fact Al Gore won the popular vote affect this analysis?

ferentchak 10y ago
From the Article "[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.)"

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

Would be more impressive with a definition of charisma. So I'll offer one - "charisma" makes voters (who are individually irrelevant) feel like important players the candidate really cares about. It's simple demagoguery and flattery. Conversely, when voters feel their craven prejudices are being ignored for rational policy reasons, they feel excluded and marginalised. The conclusion is that most voters are like children who can be bought by a reassuring pat on the head to make them feel like mommy and daddy love them, and a promise of sweets after. This is literally why we can't have nice things. Democracy needs adult policies debated rationally by adults. If most voters can't make decisions in an adult way, they're easy prey for the grinning sharks who end up running things.

ribs 10y ago
I profoundly agree and note that voting (at least in any reasonably-sized electorate) is an inherently irrational act, and so the barrier to good judgment is high. It's inherently irrational because one's vote will almost certainly never decide an election. Everyone intuits this fact. Even though they may consider themselves to be performing a civic duty, they will always be subject to s host of other reasons for voting as they do, reasons other than pure consequentialist thinking.