Do You Like The Candidate? Is He Like You?
The Phillips Foundation hosts an awards dinner each year at the National Press Club in Washington to introduce the winners of our Robert Novak Journalism Fellowships and our Lifetime Achievement Award. Both my husband and I are past recipients of this generous fellowship and I have been privileged to serve as a judge for the program the last few years. We have another excellent crop of young journalists, who are interested in reporting on constitutional principles, a democratic society and a vibrant free enterprise system. Charles Krauthammer was the recipient of the lifetime achievement award.
Prior to the dinner, several dozen Phillips Foundation fellows gathered to discuss our current work and hear from pollster Kellyanne Conway. She explained to us some of the ways that the media use polls to advance their own agenda. It was fascinating to see all the different ways that the system can be gamed. For instance, focusing questions on personality as opposed to issues can make voters think the big decision they face is who they want to have a beer with. Failing to accept "I don't know" as an answer can seriously pervert polling results about which candidates are front-runners or which issues need attention from lawmakers. It was fascinating.
One of the things Conway noted, though, was that presidential elections do hinge on a couple of simple questions. Do you like the candidate? This doesn't mean you want to marry him or sit through a baseball game with him so much as "Can I stomach listening to him for four to eight years?" The second is whether the candidate is like you. By that she meant, does the candidate understand what it's like to feel the pain of the economy or the concern over where to send your child to school. Have they shared similar experiences to you when it comes to taking care of an ailing parent or a special needs child.
I couldn't help but think of these questions when I learned the latest news about the improbable campaign of Newt Gingrich. Politico reports that the Gingrich's claim somewhere between a quarter-million and half-million dollar debt to Tiffany & Co. Tiffany & Co.! When asked about the debt, he said he wasn't going to play "Trivial Pursuit" and discuss such matters. Whatever else such a response is, it's not the wisest way to handle the question.
As I tried to imagine just how someone might rack up that kind of debt, I thought of Conway's second question. I can't imagine many voters, after learning this tidbit, would be able to answer it in the affirmative.
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Feb '11
Re: Do You Like The Candidate? Is He Like You?
"Whether the candidate is like you"...yes, people often do vote based on this perception, and it' s a pretty easy one for an astute candidate (a category that clearly doesn't include Gingrich) to rig. Many academics, for example, supported Obama because they thought he was at heart a professor like them. In reality, of course, there is no way that Obama, with his overwhelming demand for adulation and his complete disinterest in analytical thinking, would have been either happy or successful as a professor, but a few genuflections in that direction were sufficient to convince the professoriate that he was really one of them.
Aug '10
Re: Do You Like The Candidate? Is He Like You?
As I tried to imagine just how someone might rack up that kind of debt, I thought of Conway's second question. I can't imagine many voters, after learning this tidbit, would be able to answer it in the affirmative.
There is nothing trivial about half a million dollars, not to an individual voter. The average American needs the better part of a decade to earn that kind of money.
No way I want to hear Newt say another word, not after that nonsense about "any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood", even I am not stupid enough to believe that. I thought Obama was arrogant, Newt can teach him a thing or two.
He ought to just cut me a husk and go away.
91% of NRO readers say his campaign is over.
Edited on May 18, 2011 at 11:16am