You don't have to be liked to be president ... but it helps

CNN: You don't have to be liked to be president ... but it helps
June 13, 2007
By Bill Schneider
CNN Senior Political Analyst


According to a new CNN poll, Sen. HIllary Clinton leads -- even though Democrats find Sen. Barack Obama more likeable.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Does likeability matter for a presidential candidate?

It may not be the determining factor, but likeability does matter.

Hillary Clinton is now the frontrunner among New Hampshire Democrats. But when Democrats were asked which candidate they find most likeable, Clinton came in third, behind Barack Obama and John Edwards.

Is that a problem? Stephen Hess, a presidential historian at the Brookings Institution in Washington is not so sure.

"If you were listing the things a president had to be good at, like being commander-in-chief or being chief executive of a federal bureaucracy, you wouldn't put likeability up there as a necessary quality."...

Likeability has come to matter more because, in the age of television, Americans have a personal relationship with their president, probably more than any other elected official....

***

Have Americans elected a president they didn't particularly like? "Try Richard M. Nixon," Hess said. "Twice."...

***

When people choose a president, it's like hiring someone for a job. The first thing voters want to know is, can the candidate do the job? Once they're satisfied with the answer, they ask, "OK, but is this someone I like? After all, we're going to have to work together for the next four years.''

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/06/13/schneider.likability/index.html

Oh yeah. And look how well that worked out!
I deplore the superficial, celebrity-driven, horse race aspect of modern elections, but I'd say the Nixon example provides a pretty good argument for likeability.

Competence counts even more than usual ~ honestly, I'm surprised so many would actually want the job!

The Media talked about how likeable he was every hour
on the hour.

"He is comfortable in his own skin" was repeated every hour
on the half hour.

They made sure we knew they did not like Kerry or Gore.

Remind them of what likeability and comfortable in one's
skin has brought us the past 6 years.

They pushed the likeability factor. This article, at least, puts things in some balance -- I hope it's right that people look at likeability after other things.

It was the media that were telling us that loser was likeable.
Personally, I thought he was pretty creepy from the get-go: the swagger, the weird jaw thing, and that psychotic sounding "heh-heh-heh" at all the wrong moments.