Addressing the unfounded concern that Ron Paul cannot win because he has no charisma, doesn't dress well, and doesn't look presidential enough. by Walt Thiessen
(libertarian)
Saturday, November 5, 2011
It has become the major refrain of the anti-Ron Paul campaign: "He can't win." My question is: why not? When I look at these claims more closely, what I find is that they actually hold no water. So let me take a moment to discuss some of the most popular reasons why Ron Paul supposedly cannot win.
Ron Paul has no charisma
The popular theory in this regard is that voters are only interested in candidates who have that undefinable certain something, that voters will always go for glitz and glam over substance. To some extent this has some merit, but the argument also overlooks a tremendously important fact about this election that is not true of most elections. Politicians these days all have low public approval ratings.
Congress is in the single digits at 9% approval according to the latest CBS News / New York Times poll. President Obama successfully killed Osama bin Laden, gave the left most of their prized health care plan, and is spending money like there is no tomorrow, yet his approval rating according to the latest Gallup poll is around 43% approve, 50% disapprove.
In the race for the Republican nomination, handsome and smiling Mitt Romney is neck-and-neck with Herman Cain, despite the fact that almost no one in the party likes him on the issues. Romney's approval ratings in his home state of Massachusetts are at 43%, down from 56% in February. It's quite telling to note that Romney is the only candidate so far to respond to Ron Paul's balanced budget proposal with his own version that claims to cut less than half as much but in fact is really no more than the typical budgets that don't balance that the Republican leadership in Congress has been proposing all along. In other words, he's the leading status quo candidate.
The "anybody but Romney" camp behaves like Ron Paul doesn't exist. So they end up supporting the latest flash in the pan. Currently, it's the virile ex-Federal Reserve Bank president Herman Cain, who is trying to live down a group of supposedly secret sexual harassment cases that are based on events he claims never happened, or if they did happen, they weren't as bad as they sound. Actually, it's hard to know what Cain is saying about them with any clarity because his story about what happened seems to change fairly often, depending upon who is interviewing him and how the questions are worded. For instance, he has claimed both that Gov. Rick Perry is responsible for orchestrating the story, followed by claiming that it's a liberal conspiracy. The International Business Times has a particular amusing article on this story entitled, "Cain Shooting Himself in Foot with Fumbling Responses". At this stage in the campaign there are few "approval/disapproval" numbers on candidates like Cain who have no public office experience, so we cannot know for sure how he will fare after the sexual harrassment scandal. However, if history is any guide, his numbers will decline over time, particularly as more details about the sexual harrassment controversy emerge.
Dashing and suave Gov. Rick Perry lost support after his initial surge by touching the third rail of politics (Social Security) and by tying himself to an endless series of flat taxes that, it turns out, are anything but flat, all after it came out that he actually favored Federal bailouts. Perry's approval ratings in Texas are at 39%, while 44% disapprove of the job he's done in his home state.
Young and attractive Michele Bachmann took her nosedive after her New Hampshire campaign staff quit en masse because she was ignoring the Granite State, an event which followed a series of speaking missteps that made people wonder if she could handle being Congresswoman, let alone the Presidency. Her approval ratings in the 6th Congressional District in Minnesota shows her approved by just 34% of the voters.
Everyone one of those people: Obama, Romney, Cain, Perry, and Bachmann qualify as pretty people. They all have that charismatic quality to one degree or another that political critics say Ron Paul doesn't have. Yet, every one of them is disliked by the populace.
And while the poll is a couple of months old, we can also see the approval and disapproval ratings of the candidates in a survey reported by whiteoutpress.com in August of an AP-Roper-GfK poll that showed that only Ron Paul had more positive approval than negative approval at 37% to 36%. Obama was at 46% approval, 52% disapproval. Romney was approved by 39% but disapproved by 41%. Rick Perry was approved by 33% and disapproved by 36%. Michele Bachmann's numbers were also bad at 35% approval, 43% disapproval. Meanwhile, Herman Cain was approved by 21% and disapproved by 27%.
These numbers show that the pretty candidates are actually not as popular as the grandfatherly, non-charismatic, every-man candidate that Ron Paul is. Of particular interest are the disapproval numbers, because in politics the higher your disapproval numbers are, the more unlikely it is you can win a race. Obama should be very, very concerned about his disapproval numbers over 50%. That's the range Hillary Clinton was in when he came from behind to take the Democratic nomination in 2008. And while the other candidates' disapproval numbers are lower, that's mostly because most of America doesn't really know them yet. The more they know them, the more likely their disapproval numbers will increase.
So the charisma factor seems to be working against the pretty candidates this year. The grandfatherly Paul is looking better and better by comparison.
Ron Paul Doesn't Look Presidential
Going by what voters have supported for president over the past 50+ years, I think it is fair to say that the "looking presidential" argument is looking seriously overrated to most Americans these days. After all, those same presidents are the ones who have worked so hard, each in their own way, to help us get into the mess we're currently in today. Just ask the folks in the Occupy Wall Street movement or the folks in the tea parties, who agree(!) that both the Republican and the Democrats are at fault for everything (although many tea party people lean toward insisting that it's just the liberals who are at fault, while many OCW activities say the same thing about the conservatives).
Both Republican and Democratic party leaders have been losing support within their own bases by large amounts, despite the fact that these groups are also loaded with pretty people. Given the above-supplied information on the popularity of the leading candidates for president, it doesn't seem like the "presidential look" is playing very well this year.
Ron Paul's Stances On The Issues Are Too (Radical/Scary/Isolationist/What-Have-You)
This is quite possibly the most ridiculous batch of arguments claiming Ron Paul cannot win. They amount to little more than saying that since Ron Paul does not support the status quo, then he cannot get elected. Paul himself has stated on numerous occasions that the reason the mainstream media and the mainstream politicians are doing their best to ignore his campaign is that he is the only candidate who is attacking the status quo, and the status quo doesn't like it.
The people who claim Paul's stances on the issues mean that he cannot win have shut their eyes to what is happening. The status quo is looking very unappealing to the vast majority of Americans. That's what the polls are telling us. The people are tired of the endless recession that isn't called what it is. They're tired of the endless wars. They're tired of the inflation that isn't called inflation. They're tired of the unemployment that won't go away no matter how much money the government spends and the Federal Reserve prints.
So the fact that Ron Paul's views are not in the mainstream is the exact reason why he can win. Add in the fact that he predicted the housing boom, the financial crisis, and the resulting recession in 2003; that he also predicted the current dollar crisis accurately; that he is the only candidate with a concrete plan for balancing the federal budget; and it becomes clear that not only is he outside the "mainstream view" that his critics are so blithe to point to, but the "mainstream view" itself is actually out of touch with the populace.
Ron Paul Doesn't Dress Well And Doesn't Present Himself Well
It seems silly at this point to have to address the concerns of the fashion industry, but in light of how bad the rest of the candidates are, as well as how well they dress, I think it's fair to say that America needs someone who is more concerned with getting the job done than with whether or not his suit costs $2,000 and is beautifully tailored.
Ron Paul's time is now.
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