Clara Bow was Hollywood’s original starlet with “It”, that undefinable quality that made people immediately like her. Politicians who lack “it” (e.g., Mitt Romney) have a hard time getting elected, no matter how much money they spend and how much policy detail they master. Politicians who have “it” (e.g., Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan) in contrast are lifted by their likeability among voters, so much so that they can for example be returned to office even in rough economic times.
People who don’t understand politics often respond to an enemy politician’s likeability by screeching “Well, voters won’t like him/her once they find out that (insert long indictment of the politician’s policy record here)”. But what arch-liberals learned to their great pain during Reagan’s Presidency and arch-conservatives are learning during President Obama’s is that blistering attacks of this sort tend to boomerang. The attacker’s fellow partisans may love it, but swing voters react by feeling protective of the politician, i.e., “who’s that nasty person beating up on someone I really like?”
Of the Republicans who might run for President in 2016, who’s got “it”?: Chris Christie. His performance on Letterman, which left his host in stitches, was about a good as you will see (The doughnut, and his beautifully delivered explanation for it, were particularly masterful). He comes across in a way that Romney never did: As a regular, accessible and unpretentious person with whom many people would be happy to have a beer. And being fat helps: Americans have historically liked hefty presidents and they probably like them more now that obesity is prevalent and they enjoy comparison points that don’t make them feel bad about their own waistline.
About 40% of Americans are going to vote Republican in 2016 no matter what, and a similar proportion will vote Democratic no matter what. The rest of the voting population may well be swayed by something no more complicated than a sense that they “just kinda like him/her for some reason”. That isn’t what a policy wonk wants to believe, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Christie’s got “it” and that means he has a real shot at the top job if he wants it. And for the same reason, GOP proposals to split the electoral college vote in Virginia and Pennsylvania by district are self-defeating because Christie’s the kind of likeable candidate who could put those states back in the R column.
2016 is a long, long way off, but I’m keeping my eye on the big fella from Jersey.
Tags: chris christie
He earned a vote with the rant — directly squarely at some of his most ardent fans nationally — against the bigots (his word, IIRC) who opposed a New Jersey judge because he was a Muslim and had represented suspects post-9/11.
sigh.
The issue isn’t the general, it is the primary.
At various times in recent memory, Christie has thrown the house GOP under the bus, Mitt Romney and the Rove establishment under the bus, and the conservative movement under the bus. Do you think any of them are going to forget that?
The issue isn’t whether he has the “it” factor in the general, the issue is whether he can fight off all the long knives that are pointed at him in the primary.
Name one Republican who has ever done so in the modern era.
chirp, chirp.
Mitt Romney
Guess again. The Rovian establishment literally picked Rmoney. Read the FEC reports and weep.
John McCain. He was best known for his fling with moderation in the late nineties and early aughts — and was despised by the farther right. The fact that he has since reverted to his (very) mean surprised many who aren’t from Arizona.
Both Romney and McCain worked very hard to conciliate the hard right after their relatively timid moments of deviation from crackpot “orthodoxy”. Romney in particular disowned pretty much his entire career to make nice with the teabaggers. I see nothing about Christie to indicate that he has the willingness or the capacity to do the same. I think it’s more likely that Christie would switch parties than that he would get the GOP nomination.
“Both Romney and McCain worked very hard to conciliate the hard right after their relatively timid moments of deviation from crackpot “orthodoxy”.”
And both largely failed, arousing major primary opposition, and going into the general election with tepid support. The difference is that Romney and McCain were mostly alienating conservatives, which doesn’t particularly bother the party establishment. (Who’d love to be rid of the conservatives, if it weren’t for the fact they wouldn’t have a party anymore…) Cristie isn’t so selective, so the establishment won’t have his back when conservatives go after him.
You can’t play one side off the other if you piss off both sides.
McCain was backed early by the big money boyz in 2008. He had a substantial fundraising lead wire to wire. Read the SEC reports. The number 2 guy was Rmoney, who, of course, became their pick in 2012.
Who’s disagreeing? I’m just pointing out that you have to distinguish between the Republican establishment, and conservatives. It’s often the case that a Republican gets the nomination after crossing conservatives, if they’ve got the party establishment behind them, like McCain and Romney did. Pissing off the establishment, OTOH, usually means they’ll move heaven and earth to see to it you don’t get the nomination, or lose if you do. A real bunch of sore losers.
“Reversion to mean” should have legs as a general characterisation of the contemporary GOP. See Romney, Mitt; Snowe, Olympia…
Christie has a shot because he is *tough* on his critics — even those on the right. What the wing nuts crave is *discipline*, they never respected Romney because he was pandering to them. Christie will crack the whip and the wing nuts will *heel* (“heel, boy! Heel!”)
Christie comes across as a fairly likable guy in these clips from Letterman, but in other videotaped moments he comes across as a bullying asshole who isn’t likable at all. I find it hard to believe that he would be able to summon the self discipline to be the Letterman Christie through the 16 months or whatever it’s going to be of a presidential campaign.
“Being fat helps”??? The U.S. hasn’t elected a genuinely fat president since Taft in 1908*. A couple–LBJ and Clinton–have had a bit of a paunch, but neither of them were anything like obese, and Christie is very decidedly morbidly obese. I don’t think a man who looks like that can be elected president, any more than a man who talks like Haley Barbour can be. I don’t say that’s the way it ought to be, but I do believe that’s the way it is.
*I have a certain affection for Taft, as I live right next to the incomparably beautiful bridge in Washington that bears his name.
“Being fat helps”???
You did well to lard that up with question marks.
From another perspective: He’s got to survive that likeable carcass of his for another four years.
I agree with Herschel. Right or wrong, I don’t think a person as overweight as Christie can be elected. I would also wonder if he would have the stamina to run a presidential campaign–I know it is a mistake to equate overweight with lack of fitness, but running for President is grueling for anyone and he is seriously heavy.
Whether true, or not, I don’t know, but, there has always been the theory out there that the “dumbing down” of the American population was a designed, engineered, and implemented program of the Oligarchic leadership as part of a Grand Plan which would lead today’s middle class into its “proper” place, serfdom.
Whether by design, or just natural selection, the result is irrefutable: The American public is generally stupid. I only wish we were as alarmed about this dreadful situation as the Europeans are. And, they are genuinely very fearful, and perplexed, by our Kafkaesque inertia which has manifested itself by electing the boy-man, George W. Bush….twice, and almost electing Ivan The Terrible’s clone, George Romney.
So, this is an unnecessarily long explanation of how we got to the point whereby a politician’s greatest asset is the ability to “tell it like it is.” Mind you, it matters not a whit if what he’s telling us is utter gibberish. As long as “he says what he means, and means what he says,” he’s in.
And, in my opinion, Chris Christie fits that bill perfectly. His policies? Policies, schmolicies, he won’t know what they are until his graduate student aides tell him what they are…………..after he wins The Election, of course.
“Whether by design, or just natural selection, the result is irrefutable: The American public is generally stupid. I only wish we were as alarmed about this dreadful situation as the Europeans are. ”
I understand the frustration that leads to statements like this, but I don’t think denying history is useful.
I see zero evidence that the American public is more stupid than other publics, or than it has historically been. The lead-up to the Civil War showed the same sort of intransigence; the Gilded Age showed the same passivity in the face of plutocracy; then the absolute denial of after WW1 and through the whole run-up to WW2.
Meanwhile in Europe it was Germans, perhaps the most educated nation in the world, that elected Hitler to power (and which before then had supported the insane cultural substructure of people like Spengler, with their dreams of replacing civilization with a new barbarism). The French have been provincial since at least the first world war, utterly uninterested in the rest of the world and more concerned with whining about the triumph of English than anything else. It’s easy to pick and choose the occasional nice government program from some part of Europe, but it’s just as true that the continent is just as corrupt as the US in business, more so in willingness to break the law in not paying taxes. Those taxes are every bit as regressive as the US, and their plutocracy is doing just as well. And it was they, not the US, that went insanely overboard in their support of nutty rightwing economic ideas in this last recession.
There’s nothing in your comment that I could, or would, refute. But, in defense of my statement, “The American public is generally stupid,” Note, I didn’t say,” the most stupid currently,” nor, “the most stupid ever.”
“… elected Hitler …” only kinda/sorta. Strong minority bloc in Reichstag, opportunistic appointment by plutocratic senior ministers followed by coup d’etat. Elected? Let’s hope enough plutocrats have learned something from that sequence of events. Vain hope, I know.
The New York Times endorsed Hitler’s election as Chancellor (1933) in the belief that it would make him behave responsibly.
Keith is writing about likeability, which is certainly relevant to politics. But “It”? Surely Clara Bow’s was plain sex appeal to men, which has little to do with likeability. There are rare politicians who exert that kind of magnetic attraction: Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler come to mind. They were as likeable as Hannibal Lecter.
I also always toought “it” meant sex appeal.
I think you overlooked JFK.
Good point. JFK was certainly handsome, charming when he wanted to be, and sexually attractive to women. Was he non-sexually attractive to men? Or really likeable?
I think he was attractive to men.
Was he really likeable? I can’t say. Ask someone who knew him.
This is a complicated topic. There is some overlap between sex appeal and likeability but I think they aren’t the same thing. Don’t we tend to impute good traits to those we find attractive?
I wonder if charisma isn’t a better word, and a big subpart of that can be an appearance of honesty, which Christie seems to have. (As well as, see below, perhaps some anger issues that can undermine the appeal of the honesty. Hiding/channeling anger can be good. Self-control is *esential.*)
McCain had it for a while. I think people are really hungry for someone honest, I know I am. And even an unattractive person can acquire or develop charisma after you get to know them, which is good. But then it can be lost too (as in the Dean yelping incident, which still bothers me even though I can’t remember if I was a supporter then — I think I was still making up my mind). A yelp really ought not to count for anything one way or the other.
As for primaries, I don’t think there’ll be enough sensible GOP voters to get Christie through, plus, I’m still not sure about him anyway. But I could be wrong.
The Republican nominee will be Jeb. Put your money down now while you can still get odds.
Not in a million years. I’ll bet you one zillion dollars.
You’re on. If he isn’t the nominee by a million years from now, I’ll pay up and publicly acknowledge your superior forecasting.
so: Bush vs Clinton in 2016? Who says the US does not have a ruling class? (not this blog, of course…)
Are you sure Reagan won re-election because of “it” and not because of the 7.2% GDP growth in 1984?
Reagan had double digit unemployment for much of his first term and as was mentioned so many times during the recent election, was the one president who got re-elected with unemployment over 7%. Obama has now matched that feat.
The poli sci types say that the absolute level of economic indicators isn’t as important as the trajectory. Reagan and Obama both presided over improving economies – and Reagan (it is argued) did as well as he did because he presided over a dramatically improving economy.
I agree that Christie has a strong shot at the Republican nomination, in part because of his genuinely appealing persona, but also because of his acceptability to the Republican establishment.
Reagan in 1980 was the last Republican nominee who could reasonably be described as anti-Republican-establishment (alleged “mavericks” notwithstanding). And the Republican desire to win – and therefore compromise on some issues – is going to be stronger in the next election than it has been in recent elections, making a guy like Christie with some centrist credibility worth watching.
And the Republican desire to win – and therefore compromise on some issues – is going to be stronger in the next election than it has been in recent elections, making a guy like Christie with some centrist credibility worth watching.
This is the critical point that those who think he can’t win in a primary are overlooking.
What, FDR doesn’t count? Unemployment rate in 1936: 16.9%. FDR carries every state but Maine and Vermont. Unemployment rate in 1940: 14.6%. FDR wins by ten percentage points in the popular vote and wins the electoral vote 449 to 82.
You are absolutely right! I knew I was forgetting someone when I wrote that. Thanks. Another guy with “it” obviously.
Christie is very likeable and will be a formidable candidate if he makes it to the general. Keith is correct about likability, but what he forgets is that Reagan in the past and Obama now are likable and good communicators, but they are also disciplined communicators that almost never lost control of their temper in public. Even their public displays of temper were under control. Christie is prone to actual temper tantrums in public. Calling that doctor about her comments about his weight is indicative of this side of him. He comes across as a terrible bully when he does this. His fortunes in a Presidential campaign will ride on his ability to contain this problem. And make no mistake, reporters and political enemies will make constant attempts to get a rise out of him. His GOP opponents will be worse than Democrats.
It’s a fair question: He was well-rested and well-prepped for Letterman…how will he handle interviews when he has been on the campaign trail for months, getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night and being badgered all day long? That would be a test for anybody and it will be for him.
Republicans only interview with conservative media, even in the general election.
could we all please remember that he started his tenure with a sustained and vilifying attack on unionized workers?
Also chopping funding for a railroad tunnel to NYC that was desperately needed by the entire Northeast (and had the bonus anti-stimulus effect of immediately throwing thousands of well-paid construction workers out of work).
Cranky
These are the examples of the substantive criticisms that will rally the democratic base against Christie. But as I said in the post, with swing voters who like a politician based on charisma, such attacks may make them like the politician even more as “the nice guy/gal that everyone is always picking on”.
Or in this case “the fat guy that everyone is always picking on”.
and that Christie benefitted from the Bush administration’s purge of US Attorneys in other regions, while he was left to operate in office for personal and party political gain?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/02/judge-absolves-nj-christie-political-target.html
That Justice Integrity Project looks very interesting. I am not familiar with all those cases but I do recall feeling like Siegelman was treated very unfairly.
What’s so frustrating is that there does seem to be a ton of what we might call corruption in our politics, but I think most of it is the “normal,” legal kind having to do with donations, wherein the quid pro quo is just implied. Those people never get caught or go to prison, but we all know it’s happening. And we sit here and do nothing, really.
On top of which, I don’t myself believe that most politicians, or even the donors really, are “corrupt” in a technical sense. They’re just human beings pursuing their self interest, in a way that we should expect. It’s just human nature that if your job depends on a rich person liking you — which for many pols if not all of them, it does — well, you’re going to want to see things their way. And around the margins, every so often, yes I do think the money determines the vote.
And I feel bad for the prosecutors too, because these cases are probably very hard to win, and yet we all “know” that this happens. It’s really hard to pin down.
Whereas, if we beefed up our public campaign finance, made a broadcasting license actually mean something, and adjusted a few Supreme Court decisions, we could go a long way to just eliminating the problem and freeing our public servants — most of whom I believe to be mostly good — to do their danged jobs.
But no.