Friday Follies-Presidents and Personality

As we bring this 2012 election season to a close, people have discussed the personality of the two men running for President extensively. One of the measures used to discuss personality is the Myers-Briggs test. A quick explanation of the Myers-Briggs personality test, courtesy Wikipedia:

5 Presidential Debates That Changed Everything

5 Presidential Debates That Changed Everything





It's that time of year again, when the press hovers anxiously over every word, glance, and sigh from the candidates.  When the hot lights beam down, and there is no place to hide.  Yes, that's right, its time for...THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES!!!!!  This year, both the Obama and Romney camps are busy downplaying expectations.  According to their respective camps, if either candidate manages to leave the stage without puking and/or soiling themselves, the audience is supposed to regard this as an unmitigated victory.  The truth is, most of the time the debates don't matter.  It is very rare for politicians to get all the way up to the presidential level without having plenty of debate experience in their past.  Most candidates know enough to smile, answer the question or do an artful dodge, and keep on trucking.  However, the exception sometimes proves the rule.  Here are five presidential debates that changed everything...

"Come at me, bro!"

Empathy and Politics: See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me

I've been thinking a lot about empathy lately.

The subtext of this campaign seems - to me - to be about empathy, in two ways.


1. Empathy and Likability.

Yes, empathy is often considered a girly emotion (in a dismissive way), but I'm going to posit that what pollsters are testing when they talk about "likability" is actually largely a measure of a candidate's actual or perceived ability to empathize with other people.


Take Bubba.

Classic, textbook empath.  He "feels your pain."  He could read a phone book and sound interesting because he would stop and tell you stories about the people and businesses as he read their names and addresses.   

Scandals that would fell other politicians barely leave a dent on Bubba.  People get mad at him for his policies or actions, he says stupid things on occasion, but in the end he pulls out a speech or an interview and most people remember why they like him.  He understands people.  He understands how to explain complex policies to people, he understands what people are thinking.  He's empathic. 

(Grammatical note: I'm using "empathic" differently than "empathetic," because of the extra meaning of empathic to describe a person who "is very in tune with the feelings of others," rather than "of or related to empathy" - for which I'll use "empathetic.")

And that quality leads to large likability numbers, which rebound after an appropriate time whenever he faces criticism.

Convention Speeches: 9 Good, 1 Bad, and 1 Ugly

 

There is an art to a good convention speech.  The best of them live for years after the convention, cemented in the political memory as an encapsulation of a moment in time.  They create catchphrases that become the rallying cry or the main narrative line for the fall campaigns that follow.  And even when the campaign fails, a good convention speech lives on.  So here I give you 9 good convention speeches, and a couple of very bad ones.

Friday Follies: Hey Girl, Politics Are Dreamy

Evolution of a political meme:

First, there was Ryan Gosling, Tumblr (profanity in its real title).  Not really political, just funny.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Mandi talked about Gabby Douglas and the kerfuffle about her hair.  I'm listening to Game Change (I know, it's old, but it's taken me a long time to be willing to revisit the serious anger I developed over the 2008 campaign), and spending a lot of time thinking about how everybody from the Democratic Establishment to the press to Bill Clinton treated Hillary in the 2008 campaign.  And it's not like people were nice to Michelle Obama in that campaign.

Basically, I'm thinking a lot about the expectations we have for women in public life.

Here are some of the things that drive me to think about this topic.

My Name Isn't "Hillary," But I Play Her on TV

So you're Hillary Clinton.  Which is probably pretty awesome a fair amount of the time.

But what do you make of the fact that there is a TV show (some would argue there have been two) about you running for/being president?  You gotta like the caliber of actor playing you: what lady doesn't like the idea of the lady who was Ripley playing her?

And maybe the spin on Political Animals is that it isn't about Hillary, per se.  But...