

What Charisma Is - mqt
http://www.paulgraham.com/recharisma.html

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mixmax
I 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> Ugly as hell,
but one of the most intelligent people in the country.

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xirium
The book Freakonomics has similar sentiments about charismatic politicians and
has supporting evidence.

