Glava

If Nixon had charisma, then I am a supermodel. The very reason Nixon lost his first presidential election against JFK in 1960 was because he lacked charisma on TV, while JFK was famous for having plenty of it.

roachboy

irate:
no. i see bush as entirely vacant.
such appeal as he has image-wise is a function of the contexts afforded his handlers by the trappings of the presidency and enacted by television news networks/segments, which, regardless of the various interpretations of "biais," are one in their support for the legitimacy of the office no matter who is in it.

if your starting assumption is one that sees bush as a person as a mediocrity (and i do not think that anyone, anywhere, imagines him otherwise, if they are honest for a moment), then his constancy, such as it is, looks more like a rigid, at times terrifying, refusal to think about a complex world, a complex situation. i do not see any way in which this refusal can be understood as a good thing.

as for opinion--by which i assume you mean polls--for the most part there are so many methodological problems, and so little detail about the methods reported, that they amount to factoids which function primarily to give television (and to a lesser extent the print dailies) the illusion of being something like a democratic feedback loop. which of course they are not--they are framing devices for advertisements....


i sometimes think that an inflatable sex dolls, always surprised, or a toaster oven, would acquire a certain illusion of gravitas if it was treated with the same assumptions, staged in the same way.
both would be constant.
neither would sway before opinion.

as for gore, i think his was among the more inept campaigns in recent memory in that he somehow ceded critical terrain to the right in the fabrication of his public persona, allowing him to somehow be positioned as too intellectual for--well who? (i never have understood this one...for who, really?)
on top of it, his dlc handlers had him in a fight with bush over giving an illusion of being centrist, which meant that their positions tended to converge in many ways, such that it could come down to a high school level popularity contestr--which bush in fact lost--but which he was able to win because his legal team was simply better when it mattered most.

you have to be pretty naieve to impute any inward qualities to the public image of a Leader--if you have ever been in a play, for example, you already know why--what you do, how it looks, is all that matters to an audience--your motives, who you are, is only transmitted through gestures. you structure an empty space that an audience fills with its own projections (this is not at all to say that the process undertaken by an actor does not require tremendous skill--but live is different from film clips, obviously---anyone can look authoritative in edited clip form).

not a bit of this implies or assumes any personal charisma, whatever that is

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Ustwo

That and the massive voter fraud in Il.

He decided to not challange it, saying it would be bad to put the country through a legal battle for the presidency.

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Mephisto2

Well, I think you'll find that I predicated my entire thread upon the first principle that at least 85% of voters already know who they support. In fact, in a recent NPR broadcast that was retransmitted in Australia, the figure they used was 89%. That is, 89% of voters already knew who they would vote for.

Now, as it is generally agreed that the election will be a close one, that implies that approximately 44% of voters will vote for Bush.

I made that clear.

It is of course a "significant number" and one I did not overlook. In fact, it is a fact that I explicitly called out before proceeding with the basis of my thread.

And I don't necessarily disagree with you. Hence the title to my thread.

If that is directed to me in particular, you are again making an error of fact. I do not "run with" any particular group of people. I'm stating an opinion on why I believe that Bush will probably win the election. Please do not get caught up in partisan mud-slinging!

I must have missed something. What tinfoil hat business? To me, at least, that implies some kind of "alien abduction" nonesense.

Well, I once again explicitly stated that I believe the Republicans are supported by a great deal of very intelligent and able people. You can't get much more qualified than Colin Powell of Condeleeza Rice for example. So if you're aiming that criticism at me, it's unwarranted.

I do NOT think, nor have I EVER stated that I think Bush supporters are stupid. I have stated that I think Bush himself is stupid and that's my opinion. If the President of the United States of America repeatedly engages in malapropisms, truisms, solecisms and (if we move on from grammatical errors) seems to make fundamental mistakes or saltations in reasoning, then I think it goes some way to explain why I have such an opinion.

Now don't get me wrong. I do not think Bush is some evil conspirator, who is trying to control the known world. I do not think Bush is a compulsive liar. I do believe that, at a fundamental level, he is a good man doing what he believes is best. The problem irate, is that I don't agree with him. And I think he's in a bit over his head and is probably being influenced by others.

Well I take exception to that statement. I respect your difference of opinion. I even understand it. But I never call you mindlessly arrogant simply for the reason that you have an alternative opinion.

That, to me, is what is mindlessly arrogant. Not the fact that we disagree, but that you feel it necessary to insult me for said disagreement.

And the exact same argument could be used by those who do not support Bush. That millions of well-informed and educated citizens disagree with his policies. In fact, it could be argued that MORE of them disagree with his policies, as it is a verified fact that Bush lost the popular vote.

So what's your point?


Yours, with the greatest repect,
Mr Mephisto

Mephisto2

My point exactly.

What we're discussing here, or at least what I'm trying to discuss, is the nature and importance of charisma and presence in swaying undecided "floating voters" (as they are called in Europe).


Mr Mephisto

Mephisto2

You're absolutely right irate.

I couldn't agree with you more.

So, as a so-called "Bush-hater" (your term, not mine), if I can accept the fact that Bush exudes more charisma than Kerry and that this will obviously affect some floating voters as a result, why can you not agree with me on this rather than descend into typical partisan bickering?

How is it insulting to Bush to compliment him on his charisma?


Mr Mephisto

irateplatypus

mr. mephisto,

i did not have your post or your person in mind when i posted the text you responded to. even so, it was nice to hear what you thought. i don't think we're so far apart on this thread as we often are. some of your disagreements were a matter of interpretation or lack of clarity on my part. good thread, keep it up.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

Ustwo

I think Bush will win because he is a better man for the job than Kerry.

I know this will make some of you sad, but you nominated an asshat.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Mephisto2

This is a blatant troll.

If we an all engage in intelligent debate, and discuss the topic in the thread like mature adults, why can't you? Why do you feel it necessary to post a worthless comment like that?

It's sad.


Mr Mephisto

Mephisto2

Irate, I apologise if I misinterpreted you.

"Insult" was too harsh a word and, it seems, inappropriate.

Mr Mephisto

filtherton

I think bush will win because most americans are sheep and it all boils down to the fact that karl rove is a more able shepard than anyone on the dem's side.

Ustwo

No I think its pretty obvious that Kerry is an ass, and a very poor choice for the nomination. Many democrats have acknowledged this, and even some are willing to talk about it.

http://www.johnkerryisadouchebagbuti...rhimanyway.com.

Please don't give me a maturity lecture, when I don't see you doing the same for blatant trolling on the left. Either be consistent or please refrain from mentioning it.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

onetime2

I too think Bush will win. Not so much because of his charisma since the only time he demonstrates it is when he's speaking from the heart (and he doesn't do that often enough) about something he really believes in.

The reason I feel he will win? Kerry's campaign is not getting traction on any real issues. Their biggest focus it seems is Vietnam. Defending Kerry's Vietnam service, attacking the Swift Boat Vets, and trying to link Bush to them while also calling into question Bush's service (yet again). If they don't get some serious traction behind one or two big issues in the next couple of weeks they're sunk.

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roachboy

who judges whether the kerry people get "traction" or not exactly?
seriously..what evidence would you look to for this?

my sense is that there is far more opposition to bush than you imagine, and that it is of a nature that would not necessarily be reflected in more recent polling, because it is firm, while the polling and the press that relays/interprets this (problematic) data both have an interest in maintaining the horserace impression.
how do you know that the polls of late have not focussed on previously defined swing areas, for example, in order to generate the impression of interest in the elections, and interest in the press insofar as it attempts to mediate elections?
polls almost never appear with any methods or raw data, so they could be of anything....

what i am unsure about is how wide the gap is that seperates what i take to be urban populations in the main and those who live in the suburbs--which is a significant political divide--if i was in the burbs, i do not know how i would derive a sense of what was going on around me politically. where i live--and in the cities i have been in over the past months, it is more obvious if you just walk around, talk to folk. there is a total disconnect between what folk talk about in threads like this and what i see going on around me.

this question, btw moves away from the question of the image created around/for bush as televised Leader and whether you impute "charisma" to it to that of the basis for judgement regarding what is going on.....

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

davik

True, however, most voters in the US are horribly uninformed; they just vote the way their parents did or the way they have always voted. It kind of keeps a third party from having a chance when people go in and just vote straight party lines without even knowning who they're voting for. That being said, if I thought he had a chance of getting in, I'd vote for Bozo in a heart beat over either of these two morons.

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-- Mark Twain