Check Out This Article on Huffington Post

John Neffinger has posted an article on www.huffingtonpost.com that should be read by every Democratic candidate and campaign worker. It is about how non-verbal communication influences voters, especially swing voters. He quotes from several studies that show that voters will pick someone they feel comfortable but whose policies they may not agree with over someone whose policies they agree with but whom they don't feel comfortable with or don't like.

The theme of his article is that Democrats and liberals have a hard time with this concept. They keep insisting that policies and programs matter more than personality. Meanwhile we keep getting beat because we nominate candidates whose policies we like, but who can't relate to the American people on an emotional basis. Candidates like Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry. The one candidate we nominated since 1980, Bill Clinton, who could relate emotionally to the American people won two presidential elections in a row, the first Democrat to do that since FDR and only the third Democrat to do that since 1860.*

Speaking of Clinton, he once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. The quote is not original with him, but you get the point. We need candidates who can emotionally relate to Americans, not just give them position papers.
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*The only Democrats elected to the presidency since 1860 were Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. Cleveland won two terms, but they were separated by one Republican term. Wilson won two in a row, FDR won four in a row, and Clinton, as noted, won two in a row.

Why Did Bush Administration & GOP Congress Make It Easier to Declare Martial Law?

Here's something that both the left and the right can agree on: it shouldn't be easy for the national government in Washington to declare martial law and take control of state law enforcement. Yet, last October, that's exactly what the Republican controlled Congress did when it passed the defense authorization bill. Tucked away in the bill were two amendments that collectively make it easier for the President to declare martial law. Apparently this was passed with little discussion and no input from the nation's governors. If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read an NY Times editorial on this subject.

Can you imagine the outcry from the right-wing media if Bill Clinton had wanted to make it easier for the President to declare martial law? Windbags like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter would have been screaming at the top of their lungs about this Federal power grab. Yet, when Bush does it, too many of these same pundits and commentators keep their mouths shuts. That's because for too many Republicans their party is no longer the Republican Party but the Bush party. They have made the glorification of George W. Bush the end of their political philosophy. If their Glorious Leader wants it, then it must be okay, because after all he's got God on his side.

Luckily for the United States there are Republicans in Congress willing to join a genuinely bi-partisan effort to amend this horrible legislation and repeal those sections that would increase the power of the presidency. Only a fool, or Dick Cheney, and of course those two terms may be synonymous, would think that the President of the United States, and especially this President, needs an power increase.

Presidents and Intellectual Curiosity

President Bush doesn't come across as a man who has a lot of intellectual curiosity. This is not the same thing as saying that he is not intelligent. The two are not necessarily related. You can be a bright person and yet have no desire to learn about why things are the way they are. It is this lack of intellectual curiosity that distinguishes him from Bill Clinton, among other things.

Because Bush seems to lack intellectual curiosity, he is vulnerable to being misled by others. He seems to be a man who, if told something that meshes with his beliefs, doesn't question what he is being told. He doesn't seem to care about why things are they way they are.

Because he doesn't have much intellectual curiosity, he didn't ask the right questions about invading Iraq. He didn't take the time to find out what it meant for America that Iraq has two Islamic factions that don't necessarily get along. Or what would happen to Iran's influence in the region if you removed the Iraqi government which was comprised of Sunnis and replaced it with a government led by Shia politicians.

Intellectual curiosity in a president is a very important trait because it will led them to ask the right questions or question what they are being told. Yet, most political reporters never talk about this trait when discussing political candidates. They would rather talk about things like why Al Gore changed the color of his suits, or whether he was "comfortable in his own skin." Yet it is Bush's lack of intellectual curiosity that has cost this country thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of American dollars.