The Right Smile Wins?

When it comes to political research, there's no factor we won't explore in hopes of finding a clue as to who wins and who loses.  Party ID and policy stances, you bet.

But also how that smile.

A column from mid-November that I just found thanks to this report points to research suggesting how well a presidential candidate smiles can be the difference between being a winner and being a loser.

From the column:

According to research by Professor Albert Mehrabian of UCLA, how much we like a communicator depends on the “congruence” of three factors—words, tone of voice and non-verbal behavior. Fifty-five percent of what influences our judgment about that “fit” is non-verbal: the speaker’s eyes, face and an “attitude” that comes across in the body language.

I admit I'm largely unaware of this specific body of research, but it makes sense.  In the column, Jon Kraushar breaks down the last several presidential elections and the "smile factor" of each.  Read 'em yourself.  Fascinating stuff.  But, and this is a huge methodological but, I wonder whether the "smiles" and "grins" and "twinkle of the eye" are being fit to the data.  In other words, we know how those past elections came out, so it's easy to fit our perceptions of those facial expressions to the results. What's this tell us about 2012?  Nothing really.  Kraushar notes:

The secret of a winning presidential smile isn’t just in the mouth. Presidents also smile with their eyes, showing inner warmth or an amused twinkle, for example. Voters can detect the difference between the verbal and non-verbal communication of a Happy Warrior versus an Unhappy Worrier.

When I picture Obama vs. Romney, I see a tie and maybe, just maybe, an edge to Romney.  Obama vs. Gingrich?  Obama twinkles more, has better body language, plus Gingrich scares small children when he smiles.  But I admit this is merely my rather flawed and personal perception.

But any of us can play this game.  So have fun comparing twinkles and body language.  It may just matter.

Trick Questions

I caught a bit of video this morning of Newt Gingrich holding up a Newt 2012 t-shirt.  He was set up, and nicely.    The ABC reporter got him to hold up the shirt, which he gladly did for the camera, probably figuring it for a harmless puff pic.  Gingrich is all about American jobs.  Turns out, though, the shirt was made not in the U.S. -- but in El Salvador.



Newt, you've been punk'd.

"I'll have to ask the folks who ordered this," Gingrich responded. "I don't order it and I don't do it." Campaign spokesperson Michelle Selesky said "That was a rush order made by some of the volunteers." Selesky noted the print work on the shirts was done in Atlanta. 

Okay, so Atlanta is kinda like America.  So that's something.

This is nothing new.  The traditional journalistic punking involves milk.

You may not know the routine, but reporters used to follow presidential candidates around as they try to portray themselves as caring about the common man.  And then you ask him or her: "So, what's a gallon of milk cost?"

They struggle for an answer.  They've been punk'd.

There more here than just catching a high rolling politico looking like a fool.  They can do this by themselves quite well (remember Michael Dukakis doing the bobble-head doll routine in a tank, or John Kerry in hunting gear?).  And then there was President George H. W. Bush being "amazed" by a grocery store scanner, something Americans see every day.  Turns out that story is false, but it fit the narrative of a well-heeled Bush who didn't really understand Americans in a time of economic downturn.

My point?

In what people know, perception is powerful.  We tend to see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe, but a powerful narrative that paints a candidate in a certain way, such as hypocritical -- as in the Gingrich t-shirt -- or as historically challenged -- as in Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin, has lasting impact on the public mind.  And they are hard to reverse.  Chevy Chase's biting imitation of Gerald Ford on Saturday Night Live may not have lost Ford the 1976 presidential race, but it certainly didn't help.

Research shows we tend to vote for presidential candidates based on two major themes: competence, and character.  Other factors in how a race is framed, such as war or the economy, also play a huge role.  But being perceived as a hypocrite or fool, those also can influence how people think about a candidate, and making every subsequent slip-up, even the most minor, seem huge by comparison.

A Government Shutdown

With a looming federal government shutdown, we've heard a lot about the last time this happened and how Clinton bested Congressional Republicans led by Newt Gingrich.  I agree with pundits who say this time is different.  Obama is no Clinton, and no one is playing the evil part as well as Gingrich, except maybe Lord Voldemort or Dick Cheney.

Recent polls put the blame game about even. For example, a Washington Post poll in March scored it 37 percent blaming the Republicans, 37 percent blaming the Obama administration, 15 percent wagging their fingers at both. 

But I'm less interested in in who wins the blame game than in how this affects people's attitudes toward government.  There are a lot of ways to look at this.  In a nod to the Tea Party folks, there's a great poll question asked for many years by USAToday/Gallup: "In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future: big business, big labor, or big government?"

Back in 1999 and 2000, 65 percent pointed at big government.  By 2009 that had dropped to 55 percent.  No more recent data available from this poll.  Big business has gone up as a threat, from 24 percent to 32 percent.  Those evil unions?  Always around 8 to 10 percent.  Again, these data are a bit old, ending in 2009, so we have to read them with some caution.

A different poll looks at whether people think government is doing too much or too little.  Asked from 2002 to 2010, there's been little change, easily within the margin of error.

But trust in government is the big one.  A democratic government relies on the trust of the governed, it draws on that reservoir of trust (yeah, and cash) in other to operate.  Check out the graphic below, drawn from American National Elections Studies data.  Other than a few blips up (post 9/11 being the most recent), there is a steady trend toward less trust.  If you like, you can flip the chart below and look only at the rise in distrust (see here).  What's interesting to note is the steady rise in federal government trust after the 1994 takeover by Republicans (and the budget squabble with Clinton).  It's hard to tease out whether this is a function of GOP leadership, Clinton political skill, or the feds just coming off looking better as the Republicans forced a shutdown.  I'm leaning toward the latter, though I'd need to go find studies with a detailed analysis.  The ultimate point is this -- a shutdown, if it happens, might lead to people realizing how much they depend on the federal government and improve it's reputation among a cynical public.  But it's only a theory.

Googling the Potential Candidates

A simple Google exercise for this chilly Monday morning, but one I think you'll find interesting if you follow me to the end.  Who gets the most hits, among likely 2012 presidential candidates, if you Google both their name (i.e., "Sarah Palin") and "political knowledge"?  Using just the Google Blog Search function, survey says:

• Sarah Palin, 508 hits
• Mitt Romney, 96 hits
• Newt Gingrich, 60 hits
• Tim Pawlenty, 18 hits

Oh, and Barack Obama?  If you're curious, 1,224 hits.

So what?  If you read the blog posts you find Palin's name typically associated with a perceived lack of political knowledge, although often you'll come across a spirited defense of what Mama Grizzly knows.  The others?  They tend to be associated with having significant knowledge.

The more numeric among you might argue that the differences above merely represent the varying popularity of the potential candidates.  That's a good point.  If we resort to searching blogs just for the names, the results are similar: Palin (3.8 million), Romney (783,000), Gingrich (500,000), and Pawlenty (177,000).  But if you sketch it out, you'll see Palin's advantage in sheer mentions is not quite as large, proportionally, as is her advantage in being tied to "political knowledge" (or lack thereof, depending on your partisan predisposition). 

It's a slim difference, sure, but I think enough of one to matter -- and to mean troubling news for Palin should she seek the Republican nomination.  On the flip side, if I could've done this in 1978 and searched for Ronald Reagan, I might have found similar results with "political knowledge."  And it all turned out pretty well for him, come 1980, and again in 1984.