It’s the Charisma, Stupid
It’s not whom you’d want to get a beer with, but whom you’d want to watch getting a beer.
In nearly every presidential election in my lifetime, since Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford when I was two years old, the winning candidate has had more charisma. That’s charisma, from the Greek charisma, for “favor” or “gift.” That pattern continued yesterday, with Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris. If you’re a Democrat, and you want your party to win the presidency again, you should hope that next time they nominate a more charismatic candidate.
Note that “charisma” does not mean “charm” or “likeability.” It means—I’ll defer to Merriam-Webster here—“a personal magic of leadership arousing special popular loyalty or enthusiasm for a public figure (such as a political leader).” That “magic of leadership” can be inexplicable, and sometimes it can be demonic. Satan was a leader, just like Jesus.
I am aware that my argument sounds overly simplistic, reductionist. I’ll cop to that. The weakest link in my argument would be Dukakis vs. Bush, in 1988—neither seemed to have much magic. Call it a draw. And then we could look at Trump vs. Biden, in 2020. This one, too, might be seen as a draw, or as a competition between two utterly different kinds of charisma, the showboating narcissism of Trump losing to the glad-handing chumminess of Scranton Joe, a man first elected to the Senate at the age of thirty, one of the youngest ever. It was also the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Trump was a uniquely polarizing figure.
But the evidence is pretty striking, with the megawatt charismatrons like Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama all winning twice, and George W. Bush prevailing twice over better qualified but significantly more wooden opponents.
The question is often put, “Whom would you rather get a beer with?” I would phrase it differently: “Whom would you rather watch on TV as you drink beers?” I strongly suspect that even many Kamala Harris voters would rather kick back and watch a highlight reel of Trump than one of Harris. What would be on her highlight reel? What witty rejoinder, fine turn of phrase, impassioned peroration, spontaneous interaction, unexpected tomfoolery, or poignant story?
Charisma is not gendered. Aimee Semple McPherson had it. Oprah Winfrey has it. Gretchen Whitmer, Elizabeth Warren, Jennifer Granholm (born in Canada, alas, so not eligible), and Katie Porter would all have defeated Donald Trump. A hologram of Ann Richards would have won. Samantha Bee? Trump came from the world of entertainment, so why not? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a polarizing figure, to be sure—but would she have done worse than Kamala Harris? No, she would have done better.
[Read the rest here.]
Who cares?
Three weeks ago, I wrote that Paul Coates, owner of Black Classic Press, was receiving a National Book Award lifetime achievement award despite the fact that he is responsible for publishing the works of numerous antisemites and homophobes. I expected that the “mainstream media”—whatever that term means in this day and age—would pick up on the story (which initially was broken by the great Jewish Insider; my piece added new evidence)—would pick up on the story. After all, the award was voted on by numerous titans of publishing, like Jonathan Karp, head of Simon & Schuster, and Morgan Entrekin, of Grove/Atlantic. Anthony Marx, head of the New York Public Library, is on the board that made the award.
As it turned out, the story was not mentioned by the Times, the Post, The Atlantic, or any of the other most elite organs that cover books and publishing. It was picked up by the Jewish ethnic media and by two publishing trade journals, Publishers Weekly and Publishers Marketplace. (It was ignored by LitHub, which is obsessed with Gaza and Israeli perfidy but not, apparently, with calumnies against the Jews; ignored by the books newsletters of The Atlantic and The Washington Post; etc.) It was finally run in condensed form by the good people at The Free Press.
I am not under the illusion that every piece I write deserves virality. More than anything, I am just curious why a piece that involves antisemitism, major publishing names, awards (Americans love awards), and the father of a very famous writer seemed so uninteresting to so many. Is it possible David Baddiel is onto something?
100 Reasons to Be Happy
I really don’t like week-after-election post-mortem belly-aching about how hard it is to smile, to get out of bed, etc. No matter how much an election didn’t turn out to your liking, there is nothing served by acting as if the sky has fallen in—and in fact, people for whom the sky is falling, perhaps because of the policies of an incoming government—probably do less moaning and more actual acting and doing. If you really think the world is at stake, you pull on your boots and figure out what to do, not what to say.
Three days after the election, I was at a podcast taping where the host moaned and wailed about the election results, while presuming that everyone in the audience agreed with him. Now, given the deep New England locale and what I could surmise about the podcast’s fan base (of which I am a part), the host was probably not wrong. But still: there were possibly ten people there who were cheered by the election outcome, and perhaps even more, like me, who were not cheered but who felt even worse after hearing the host being all publicly sad (and make assertions like, “Their side doesn’t want you to smile,” which I think is factually indefensible).
All that said, if a bad election outcome thousands of miles away is what it takes to get fave Brit Nick Hornby to make a list of “100 reasons to be happy,” then at least we can count that as a win. Here are some of his reasons to be happy, per his newsletter, with some annotations from me:
Laurie Colwin
Agreed! Too-forgotten genius.
Any sea with proper waves.
Totally.
Bruce Springsteen, any 1978 show.
I’ll take his word for it. I was four years old.
Mavis Staples
Yes, though the new song, “Worthy,” is self-help tripe.
Lonesome Dove
Haven’t read it.
Nigel Slater’s 30 Minute Recipes
This American has no idea what you are talking about.
Friday Night Lights (with the obvious exception of season 2)
This one is tricky. The book was sooo great, the movie a bit less so, and the TV series even less so—but still great.
Blueberries in cereal or porridge.
Not as good as raspberries, but points for “porridge.”
Fake banana flavour.
This must be a British thing. Over here, we do fake pumpkin flavor.