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Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Obama Charisma Star Still Rising?
Let’s start this thread with a comment that came in on another string. You’ll see why I wanted to do that.
First, however, a word: This blog is monitored. I decide which comments get posted. I am not posting comments that are arguments for or against a candidate. That just isn’t what we’re doing here. Plenty of other places are doing it. I can understand why my post about race was seen by some as pro-Obama. But that wasn’t the idea. Please try to remember that the predictive system in use here predicted Bush on ‘04, not to mention all the other Republican popular-vote victories in recent decades.
OK, here’s the comment. It’s a couple of weeks old. Sorry about that.
From Tom Q:
This place has gone…umm…a little quiet lately. Which is, I suppose, partly to be expected, given that it’s off-season until we hit the conventions. But isn’t it, in another sense, prime time for Keys-ers? To watch the nightly news now is to laugh uproariously, as one after another meaningless campaign back-and-forth is discussed soberly for the impact it might have on the November outcome. There are scattered people who’ve articulated “Gee, this election may not be so close after all, given the circumstances”, but for the most part they’re being shouted down by “McCain says Obama snubbed the troops! Might this kill Obama?” And, to go back to one of my favored points: do we still, after the overseas trip, question if Obama takes the charisma key? A whole lot of people seem to be throwing the word around these days. Are they all wrong?
A response:
You have more tolerance for the nightly news than I do.
You know, for years I have argued that familiarity with the Keys and the predictability of some presidential election outcomes does not decrease one’s interest in voting, in participating or in elections, in general. Lately, however, I find it does diminish my interest in the nightly news, broadly defined. At least SOMETHING is doing that. I suspect that’s the main reason the blog has languished. Will try to revive it now, though. There really are a lot of things to comment on.
As for charisma:, it’s a good question. The thing to remember about all the keys is that the threshold for turning them is high. A scandal must be a MAJOR scandal. A national hero must be an Eisenhower, not a Kennedy, Kerry or McCain.
A lot people used the word charisma about Bill Clinton, too. But Lichtman never turned the key for him; and we have to be consistent. There really is a difference between somebody who has a way with people, who dominates a room, who talks with special facility (none of which is so uncommon in politics), and somebody who stands out in his own time and in history for the emotional attachment he generates in great numbers of people. I’ve been watching Obama all along with the charisma key in mind. He had the best, most emotional political event I’ve ever seen in Dayton, in 25 years. But I’m really not seeing the special, Reaganesque star quality. It could still emerge, I suppose.
When Lichtman wrote his first book on the Keys in the early 1980s, he said that only once in history had a key changed during the campaign: 1n 1960s, a special star-quality attached to JFK after the debates. All of a sudden, the girls were screaming. (For the record, he didn’t need that Key to have the prediction made in his favor.)
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