The candidate you wanna have a beer with

One of the more interesting anecdotes that came out of the 2000 election cycle was a story about the final round of polling by John Zogby (the only pollster to accurately predict the tied outcome). Apparently, after polling for Bush or Gore in the days and weeks leading up to the election, and coming up with no clear winner, he decided to try a new approach.

The final poll before election day, Zogby’s poll asked respondents to imagine that they were citizens of Oz, and were asked to choose between the Scarecrow and the Tin Man for President. The Tin Man, all head and no heart, received 48% of the vote, and the Scarecrow, all heart and no head, also received 48%. Zogby called it a tie, 36 days later the Scarecrow was sworn in as President, Red States and Blue States were established, and the Left became paranoid of the candidate you most wanna have a beer with.

Aside from my earlier complaints about the whole inverted Churchill thing, I’d also like to say a word specifically for decision by beer drinking being an okay way to pick a President.

First of all, the beer thing is an obvious analogy for relating to a candidate, the whole, “I feel your pain” concept. I do think that’s important, despite the common liberal cry (which Bill Maher seemingly expresses every 15 minutes) that “I want a President smarter than me.” For many Americans, voting for a President who is smart might be fine, but voting for a President that they can relate to may be of even greater importance. That President would seem to be more likely to identify with their problems and fight to do something about them.

Lately, Hillary Clinton has started using that line about Obama — the “you already saw what happens when you vote for the President you want to have a beer with.” Yeah, in this logic, likability is now a liability, and empathy by definition equals ignorance of the issues. But the truth is, I can’t really think of a better way to cast a vote. Schooling? Woodrow Wilson had a PhD, and that didn’t keep us out of the first World War. Ideology? They say FDR’s greatest strength was that when one of his programs didn’t work, he’d scrap it and start all over. Experience? Most experienced President: probably Harding or Nixon; least experienced: Lincoln.

Bottom line is that we really don’t have a good way to pick a President, and we don’t have a very good track record of predicting what we’re going to get when we do vote for one. Now, I voted for Al Gore. I sat by the TV every one of those 36 days, and I can pretty much guarantee you that if Gore was the Tin Man, Oz should’ve gone head over heart that year. But I’m not quite prepared to extrapolate from that that every person who ever votes for the “likable” candidate; every person who votes for the candidate they want to have a beer with, and every person who may be inclined to vote for the scarecrow in subsequent elections is automatically stupid and is automatically making a bad choice.