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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   17878 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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I think when we have posts like this where a poster calls a series of broadly successful politicians uncharismatic and/or stupid, we should make it an expectation that the poster cites some examples of politicians they do think are charismatic. Somebody has to have charisma and intelligence to have reached the top in a cutthroat hierarchical game filled with competitors. They didn't all luck into becoming senators and governors and vice presidential candidates.

This place is feeling like one of those barbershops where every modern athlete sucks and couldn't carry the jockstrap of [guy from when the barber was a kid].

where a poster calls a series of broadly successful politicians uncharismatic and/or stupid

Let me be clearer. I don’t think Walz came across as intelligent in the debate and in interviews generally. Vance is very intelligent (Yale Law, the Thiel thing, with his background, I don’t think that’s deniable) but has an off-putting personality, smarmy (even now when defending the president) and is not particularly attractive.

There are plenty of successful politicians who are either uncharismatic or unintelligent. Plenty of European and Asian countries (democracies) have uncharismatic but smart leaders. And there have been charismatic but dumb leaders, too. Boris Johnson probably isn’t stupid but was academically poor (graduating with the lowest passing grade in the British college system); JFK wasn’t particularly smart.

I always thought Obama sounded exactly like a mediocre adjunct law professor and could never see any charisma, but given his successes, I'm obviously the wrong one.

Ditto that when People magazine called Bill Clinton the sexiest man alive back in the day, though I'm a straight dude so that probably has a lot to do with it.

"With all due respect, sir, you are no Jack Kennedy."

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