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Originally Posted by suzzer99
FDR most likely wins post-1900 charisma (pretty hard to judge earlier w/o video and audio).
IIRC he did ok for himself.
Seems like Lincoln wasn't exactly a cold fish.
It makes sense in the long run. You want to back a horse that you think is going to win. Humans get together and agree on the characteristics that they admire in a tribe leader, people respond to those characteristics and rally around that person.
Evolution turns it into a self-fulfilling prophecy, like looks. You want your offspring to not only survive and be healthy, but procreate. So you want them to look like the kind of individuals that other individuals would procreate with, etc.
In addition to being completely circular, I don't think this is really true as a matter of historical fact. In small scale societies, the political leaders are usually older folks who are trusted in the community, are thought of as wise, and who are from the economic upper strata. Even in the pre-mass-politics era, most of the politically powerful people would have been chosen mostly for their ability and loyalty (from among the narrow caste of eligible people determined by birth). For example, a 17th century king is not going to choose his finance minister because he's the tallest candidate or for his fetching hairstyle, he's going to choose the finance minister he thinks can come up with money to fund the army.
It's mostly when you get into big democracies, and especially mass media democracies, where "charisma," which is basically a euphemism for the
dark triad personality traits, becomes important over actual qualifications. It's not a coincidence that FDR, Mr. Charisma, was also a notorious schemer who played all of his advisors off against each other and, most famously, went to his grave not having told his successor Truman about the atomic bomb. Also not a coincidence that charismatic Bill Clinton was, at a minimum, an epic philanderer and has at least been accused of being a rapist. Charismatic Trump's only notable qualities are an epic level of narcissism and a freakish talent for flattering people's hatreds and insecurities.