So how come Gary Hart never became president? And what’s so square about Kerry? He was easily cooler than Bush.
The OP stretches the point but there is something to it though I think it only applies since 1980. It’s not about being “cool” exactly, more a matter of being likeable and relaxed. Reagan, Clinton, Bush 2 and Obama all had this quality relative to their opponents. Bush 1 didn’t have this quality but neither did Dukakis.
This clip is really the perfect example. Gore comes off as a pedant going on about **the **Dingle-Norwood bill and bizarrely charging at Bush and Bush comes off as relaxed especially when he nods at Gore.
Needless to say Romney is very much in the line of awkward losers from the last 20 years which is yet another reason to believe he will lose.
He never ran technically. He failed to obtain the Democratic nomination.
No model that says who “always” wins can ever be all that great. Certainly “coolness” is one factor that determines who the voters vote for, but it can’t be the sole determiner. Consider the 2000 election, for instance: If a couple thousand voters in Florida had gotten better directions for filling out their ballots, we’d have had President Gore instead of President Bush. The election going the other way is something that really could have happened, very easily. In a world where Gore won (which was almost this world), the cool guy wouldn’t have won.
Trump “out cools” Hillary which is not hard.
No matter what you think about Trump, his rallies were nearly rock concert hot.
The coolest cat won. I think my theory holds.
It’s a self fulfilling theory after the fact. Winning is way cooler than losing.
What? I thought both Gore and Kerry were considered ‘cooler’ than GWB, who was mocked as having big ears and a dweeb and pronouncing ‘nuclear’ as nuk-u-lar or something like that.
Nope. Gore and Kerry were dweebs. Bush was a good old boy that everyone wanted to have a beer with. Being smart ain’t cool, not that Gore and Kerry were all that bright except compared to Dub-ya.
We wait with bated breath on the nomination of Zaphod Beeblebrox for POTUS.
I think this is hindsight/winning-is-cool analysis. All the way back to 1992, the Democratic candidate has been the cooler one, the one more celebrity-endorsed, popular with the younger generation, or at least, even if not himself/herself cool, certainly cooler than the Republican. The Republicans had the likes of GHWB, Dole the creaky old WWII vet, Bush the big-eared and oft-ridiculed, Dinosaur McCain, and old white Mittens Romney.
You don’t seem to know what cool is. Gore and Kerry were dweebs. They were nerdy socially awkward guys. Bush was the opposite of that.
‘That is really amazing,’ Trump said. ‘That really is truly amazing. That is so amazingly amazing I think I’d like to steal it.’
I think it’s difficult to make the call this election. Trump obviously had more star power. But one component of “cool” is being cool-headed under pressure, which is not the same thing as “hipness” but does interact with it a little bit.
Trump is definitely not “cool as a cucumber” (even ignoring his midnight-tweet propensity). I was finally convinced that Hillary would make a good Pres, as opposed to a merely satisfactory one, when she was grilled for at least a day straight by Congress and never lost her cool. Trump could not do that (let alone answer Congressional questions coherently.)
I was not eligible to vote prior to 1976 but I’ll go with the premise from the OP (four years ago) if you switch “charisma” with “cool”. Don’t have to have a lot, just need to have more than the opponent. Sort of the “who would you want to have a beer with” theory of voting.
Before 1960, the impact of TV wasn’t as great. 1968 and 1972 were almost toss ups in what appeared to be a race to be dull.
I don’t think being ‘cool-headed’ or ‘cool as a cucumber’ have anything to do with the type of cool that satisfies the OP’s theory. Trump’s defiance of authority and tradition give him the coolness in this case, plus as I mentioned before, he won. Not that I consider Trump all that cool anyway, but he is cooler than Hillary, she could be best described as cold, which is not at all a good thing relative to cool.
Plus, John Kerry looks like he should have bolts in his neck and big clunky boots.
Gore was married to the woman who essentially tried to censor most good music back in the 1980s. In my view, he was probably tainted to some degree by that, at least in terms of coolness anyway.
I think the OP is mostly, but not entirely correct. The main exception, as others have noted, is Richard Nixon. Other than Nixon, however, I think the theory has held true in every election since at least FDR.
On the other hand, my recollection is that the candidate with the higher negatives has generally been the winner in recent yeasts, which might cut against the coolness theory.
Or not…think of the coolest dude (or chick) in your high school. That person had high negatives, from some of the (adult) establishment figures, and from some of the victims of not-coolness.