Liking the President
How elections are won.
Full disclosure: I haven’t voted for a major-party presidential candidate all century. And every major-party candidate I voted for before then, lost.
I haven’t read his books on the topic, but I’ve heard Gary Lachman on podcasts say that Donald Trump has employed New Thought philosophy in his life and in his political career, because when he was young and went to church, it was at the church Norman Vincent Peale was the pastor. Peale was the most prominent exponent of New Thought at the time.
What Trump says is usually untrue, so we call it a lie. But what Trump says, he wants to be true. He’s affirming it. He expects it to be true.
I think there’s some validity to the idea that New Thought influences elections, and you don’t have to be a practitioner. For New Thought isn’t much more than expectation. What I recall from all Presidential elections in my lifetime is that the ultimate winner had an internal confidence in the outcome.
And that, they had nothing to lose if they lost.
It seems the people who’ve lost the Presidency in general elections are people who are most devastated if they lost. Donald Trump would have been fine if he had lost; Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones would be talking about Hillary impeachment proceedings on the Trump News Network.
But Hillary Clinton had nowhere to go. Mitt Romney had nowhere to go. John McCain had nowhere to go. Al Gore had nowhere to go. Bob Dole had nowhere to go. Losing the Presidency was a failure to them; they feared the failure. And when, Jimmy Carter lost to Reagan, and George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton, they were fearing failure against somebody who had nothing to lose.
I don’t think Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or Donald Trump feared failure. Reagan and Trump had great lives even if they lost; Clinton, and Obama, had they lost, were young enough to try again.
It’s as if the more relaxed candidate wins. And the relaxed one is one who seems to enjoy life beyond politics, the one “you’d have a beer with.”
It occurs to me that every winner of Presidential elections are more interesting than the people they beat, even when they seem less intelligent. I can talk into the night with Trump about business, Obama about basketball, W. about baseball, Bill Clinton about anything, H.W. about anything, Reagan about old movies and Hollywood.
But thinking of every candidate they beat, I’d have no idea what to talk about with them except politics. And that’s usually not fun. So by default, the more “likable” candidate wins.
The winner of Presidential elections are the ones who have less to lose, and because they have less to lose, they are more interesting and, therefore, likable.
James Leroy Wilson writes from Nebraska. He is the author of Ron Paul is a Nut (And So am I). Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. Support through Paypal is greatly appreciated. Permission to reprint is granted with attribution.
