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Thoughts on what it takes to be a successful presidential candidate, circa 1980.
From Joseph Kraft:
The emergence of President Carter and Ronald Reagan as the nearly certain nominees of their parties expresses not a failure of the system, but a true translation of how much the majority prefers nice men to effective measures.
From Florence King:
We want a president who is as much like an American tourist as possible. Someone with the same goofy grin, the same innocent intentions, the same naive trust; a president with no conception of foreign policy and no discernible connection to the U.S. government, whose Nice Guyism will narrow the gap between the U.S. and us until nobody can tell the difference.
Availability bias, anyone?
Is that how we got Carter? He was the guy with the goofy grin?
Kraft’s comment is about selection of candidates rather than deciding between candidates in the presidential election.
Back in 2016, the Republicans had choices between Trump and a variety of others. I am not familiar enough with the other candidates to know who would have been effective, but clearly the choice was not a nice man. I suppose the Republicans chose Trump because they thought he would be effective, but effective at what? I think it was basically change. They were certainly right about that.
Again, I am not familiar with the other Democratic candidates, except Bernie. The Dems seemed to select on the basis of stability and effectiveness, not niceness. I don’t think many think of Clinton as “nice”.
So the primaries selected for effectiveness, not nioeness.
King’s comment is more about the election rather than the primaries. Trump does have a goofy grin, naive trust (in himself), has no conception of foreign policy and no connection to Government. He clearly does not have innocent intentions, but the Nice Guyism to narrow the gap between U.S and us has been replaced by populism. He convinced people he wanted what they wanted, and his casual bonhomie was a sort of Nice Guyism – say it like it is. This guy is saying stuff I wanted to say.
Things have changed from Kraft’s quote, but not so much from King’s.
is this a goofy grin?
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCrAzKiBFUQ/?utm_source=ig_embed