When Barack & Hillary announced their candidacy, I watched their respective speeches on the web and within seconds felt myself able to trust Barack Obama, and somewhat repulsed by Hillary. In the media, I believe what they refer to as her ‘likability’ is actually how lined up as an authentic human being she is. As a Clinton, she’s a master politician, able to switch and slide like her husband. But unlike Bubba, there’s some way in which she doesn’t seem to enjoy it like he does. You trust his slick-willy act, don’t you? It feels like the real him. With Hillary it feels like a means to an end. Like she’s putting something on, and we pick up on it. I felt it immediately when I saw her intent-to-run speech, here.
I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s second book, Blink, which describes the feats our subconcious is capable of in assessing situations and quickly making decisions. Turns out our subconcious is considerably adept at picking up on vocal intonation, facial expression, posture and other telltale signs of a human being’s wholeness and integrity. And I believe that is exactly what is happening in the primaries right now. The voters are responding to how the candidates feel. And they don’t like how the previous front-runners felt, and let them know. How does Barack Obama feel to you? How does he feel relative to John Edwards? Hillary? Dennis Kucinich? What about relative to Mitt Romney, Rudy, or Huckabee? My own thin-slice feel for the candidates on my integrity-o-meter is that both Huckabee and Obama rank high in integrity (I’d put Kucinich and Ron Paul in there as well) and the people of Iowa and New Hampshire picked up on it and trusted their instincts. While Huckabee’s politics may seem crazy to me, he feels authentic and I believe voters picked up on that. Romney feels like a politician. Edwards feels like he’ll tell you whatever you want to hear and don’t even get me started on Giuliani. I remember watching Edwards in the debates in the last election vs. Cheney. Dick came off as infinitely more authentic. Evil in his authenticity, yes, but compared with Edwards’ regurgitation of party lines and debate-prep recitations there was no contest. Cheney won the debate….I think because he felt like a lined-up human being in how he presented himself. Which was kind of scary. Cheney actually believes that he’s doing the right thing. Yikes. So, I thin-sliced each candidate and put them in order of how their authenticity feels:
- Barack Obama
- Ron Paul
- Mike Huckabee
- Dennis Kucinich
- Bill Richardson
- Fred Thompson
- John McCain
- Mitt Romney
- John Edwards
- Hillary Clinton
- Rudy Giuliani
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Scott: Barack reminds us of our own CIVIC responsibilities and role in the matter. He builds consensus and uses judgement. He is careful and thoughtful…and doesn’t play THEIR game or any games. He is part of a REAL family and has married a woman every much his equal, in Michelle. This is a REAL partnership in every way. The children are gracious and well-behaved…and authentically HAPPY to be part of something important…and FUN. You can almost imagine THAT is their family motto…and will be OUR motto. He will bring together our best and brightest across Party lines in the National interest. I have no doubt he is more than capable of being VERY firm with the special interests as a veteran of community/local politics, which in NYC is far more difficult to navigate than National. Believe it. Factions run amok. WE can make him better, and he will EMBRACE that. He has humility…something VERY rare in our Politics. The Xers, Yers, Millennials have to show up and EARN the baton pass! Then, boomers like me need to support the transition and support them through their mistakes. We have made some doozies, as the last 20 years and our current position clearly demonstrates.
Did the same only the other way round. Read Blink after thin-slicing Obama last year. Being non- US resident I felt ok about placing a wager on his eventual victory. Feeling fairly confident right now. Time will tell.
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