It's Charisma, Stupid (2004)
I want to nod along with this, but I can&#x27;t shake the feeling that it&#x27;s just too simplistic, with too small of a dataset. So Johnson was supposedly more charismatic than Goldwater, and that&#x27;s why he won, not because Kennedy had been murdered 11 months earlier? Nixon beat Humphrey because he avoided a heads-up showdown, not because Humphrey had just served as Johnson&#x27;s yes-man for several unpopular years in Vietnam? Carter beat Ford because he was charismatic, not because Ford pardoned Nixon and pissed everybody off? Reagan won because of his charisma, not because the country was mired in a years-long hostage crisis? Bush the First&#x27;s loss didn&#x27;t have anything to do with the worst recession in a decade?<p>Al Gore and John Kerry... I&#x27;ll give you those, and it&#x27;s not surprising then that he wrote this article in 2004, but I think in other instances it&#x27;s curve-fitting.