Be nice!
Plenty of people voted for Bush because they could imagine having a beer with him, whereas they couldn't picture enjoying a cold one with Kerry. Is this a good reason to vote for someone? Um, no.
Well,one person in twenty is a sociopath, and sociopaths give me the creeps. Although there are certainly other factors to consider, like policy, I'd still rather vote for someone I would not mind living next door. Shrillary fails both tests, of course. Oh, I am a psyche nurse,and my thumbnail diagnosis of sociopathy has served me well,through the years.Is Shrillary a sociopath? I'd have to get much closer to her to say, but I know that I do not like her.
I for and I:
Um, plenty of people voted for the Great Blazing Bubba for the same reason. I have a good friend who maintains that he'd still love to party with Bill. Shoot, Bush doesn't drink--who would want to have a beer with a guy who doesn't even drink?
Hillary, I think, neither drinks nor parties. She does, I suspect, go ice-fishing. Cold, that one is. I, for one, won't go there.
Of course it's true that all other things being equal one votes for the candidate one "likes"--a term each of us can define as we wish, and about which we may disagree without contradiction.
That said... the reason I blogged this one was the fawning (even gushing) tone of the article. It conveyed the impression that liking someone might be a more important reason to vote for them than other, more definable qualities and furthermore that "liking" Hillary had greater weight than say, "liking" any other candidate. In other words, it was biased and self-justifying.
And as Michael points out, "likability" can be easily faked (perhaps more so than other things) making it dangerous if that is the ONLY thing or even a MAJOR thing people look at (as I fear many do).
Do I "like" George Bush? Yeah, I do. A lot, in fact. Most of that came after having voted for him on policy.
Why? Most of it is personal: he reads many of the same books I do; he's a dedicated runner (now cyclist); he's a Methodist; he has the same kind of work/play ethic I do (hard/hard); he came to his faith late in life; he's highly principled to the point of being prickly; he's got the vision thing, etc... There's a long list.
On the margin those help. Absent a long list of compelling other reasons of greater importance, they would matter very little. The Globe doesn't seem to care about that... so long as Hillary is the one being liked. (Can you imagine them doing a similar article about people liking a Republican candidate?)
Michael, It's quite clear that Bill is the sociopath in the Clinton marriage.
Despite your uncertainty and professional experience, trust me on this one.
Hillary is just a rather transparent, manipulative, power hungry wanna-be totalitarian. Psychopath perhaps, but she lacks the social grace, charisma and fluidity that is the hallmark of most sociopaths.
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