Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Why do so many people find Obama “likeable”?

The preshizzle is sinking in all the polls that seek to measure public confidence in his ability to competently deal with…well, with practically everything…and yet, he continues to have fairly high “personal approval” numbers, indicating that a large swath of the citizenry finds him somehow likeable.

Why is that? Surely, this opinion cannot be based on the observation of his public conduct, which has consistently demonstrated petulance, pettiness, hypocrisy, excessive partisanship, smallness of spirit and irascibility of temperament. Not to mention a tendency toward cowardly bullying (remember the State of the Union speech, in which he publicly chided the Supreme Court justices, who were sitting in the audience but were in no position to respond?)

No, it can’t be because people have witnessed his behavior and actually found it to be consistent with standard notions of kindness and affability. I believe the explanation resides in an understanding of the machinery and operations of the human brain, particularly at the unconscious level, and almost exclusively in the context of visual memory and associations based on physical resemblances.

For example, perhaps Obama’s large ears trigger an almost subliminal recollection of the similarly jug-headed Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry, an easy-going, friendly character. Or, alternatively, maybe Obama’s slenderness and angularity (with an assist from recollections of the spate of recent unfavorable headlines concerning the president’s mounting list of failures) put some folks in mind of Sheriff Taylor’s hapless, occasionally pitiable, but generally likeable, deputy, Barney Fife. It could even be that the skinny Obama simply reminds a lot of people of the basic stick figure, a non-threatening, two-dimensional everyman.

This is a perfectly normal human failing. I remember that I, myself, once maintained friendly feelings toward an otherwise obnoxious supervisor simply because his physiognomy reminded me of one of my favorite childhood cartoon characters, Huckleberry Hound. And yet, I would not have relished having him for a neighbor, let alone voted for him had he ever sought public office. Therein lies the nub of the matter: to resist the temptation or urge to endow Person A with the personality and character of Person B, simply because A puts you in mind of B as a result of a mere physical resemblance.

I am confident that most voters possess the ability, ultimately, to bar this phenomenon from clouding their judgment in the polling booth; which is one reason why I believe that Deputy Fife…or, rather, heh, Barack Obama…will go down to defeat in November of 2012.

9 comments:

JeffS said...

Could be simple pity: "He's a nice guy in the wrong position, and isn't handling the pressure very well."

On the other hand......Barney was a likeable doofus, after all.

RebeccaH said...

There are a lot of reasons why people wlll still say they like President Obama:

#1 - Nobody in this thoroughly indoctrinated America wants to say that they dislike a black man, because that will be construed as Raaaaaacism, completely ignoring the fact that said black man (regardless of the fact that he is half white, half non-American African, raised by white people) might be a hard-left, Marxist-educated, anti-American.

#2- He is personally charming to his peers and/or potential rich donors (my mother used to say that one of my uncles, an amoral, alcoholic shit, could charm the birds out of the trees; just sayin' it could apply).

#3 - Those people who get their information from the legacy media (i.e., government-approved-and-potential-futureemeployment lobbyist ranks) and from nowhere else, have never been told what's really going on. (my own elderly in-laws)

#4 - religious Democrat unionism, as preached by the old Mafia-style "our way or sleep with the fishes" (thanks, Jimmy Jr., for the clarification). See above, take into account people like my in-laws (did I mention that they're elderly?), good at heart, but not deep-thinkers, with caveats for the more hard-headed sensible rank-and-file who see their American Dream sinking to third-world status.

#5 - The very small, fossilized True Believers in Communism, despite sixty or so years of hard on-the-ground facts revealing the true cruelty, starvation, creativity-stifling, reality-denying, theory-derived ideology.

I don't think any of this is sufficient to reelect a president who has consistently shown himself to be in opposition to almost everything that makes a viable society work. I say "society" rather than "nation", because as leader of the free world, everything he has done is inimical to the world as well.

rinardman said...

Two words: hype and gullibility.

IMO, Obama's "likeability" and "youthfulness" was hyped like no other presidential candidate I can remember, other than JFK. The image presented by his campaign managers, with the overly eager help of the MSM, was nothing at all like the reality that has emerged during his time in office. The young, smart, compassionate black man was an ideal that so many people (especially the MSM) wanted to believe in, and they thought they had found it in Barack Obama.

And enough gullible people bought into the hype, that he got elected. The question now is: are enough people paying attention to what he has shown himself to really be, to get rid of him?

*

SwampWoman said...

Beats me. Strikes me as an asshole.

LibertyAtStake said...

"Clean and articulate" + Political Correctness + "White Guilt"

That's pretty much it.

d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
"Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive"

Boy on a bike said...

He has a nice smile. That's enough for shallow prats.

Anonymous said...

People don't want to be called "racists". PERIOD

JorgXMcKie said...

It's the "Bradley Effect". People can say how much they hate his policies as long as they say he's 'likeable' [whatever the hell that means] they skate on a racism charge.

In many, many elections with large numbers of potential voters, and a large majority white, black politicians typically finish 5-10% under their 'likeability' rating.

See, for instance, Mayor Tom Bradley running for Gov of CA, or David Dinkins running for Mayor of NYC the second time, or Douglas Wilder running for Gov of VA.

People say a black politician is 'likeable' then go into the booth and vote for the other guy.

That makes it look like Obama is in big, big trouble.

Paco said...

JXM: Good point!