In 1988, Harold Zullow and Martin Seligman accurately predicted the winners of the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries before they happened.
Pollsters and politicians have been trying to figure out why people vote the way they do for years. There are the honest few who simply want to predict the future, print their newspaper headlines a few days in advance, but most politicos are looking for a way to game the system. Do voters want the intellectual leader or the guy they’d want to sit down for a beer with? How do we make our qualified and competent candidate more appealing to the average voter?
Make him optimistic.
Zullow examined the stump speeches for thirteen presidential hopefuls, and rated them according to Seligman’s CAVE system for optimism. He hypothesized, on the basis of analysis of speeches from previous presidential races, that candidates whose speeches contained the most markers of optimism would win the nominations. Before the national conventions were held, he sent sealed envelopes with his predictions to a reporter at the New York Times. Zullow successfully picked both the winners and pointed out the flops.
In the context of more recent elections, this makes a great deal of sense. George Bush may not have had a plan for ending the war in Iraq, but his we’re-gonna-win-this bravado sounded shaper and more commanding than I-don’t-know-how-we’re-going-to-fix-this-mess Kerry. People want leaders who can promise them that everything will turn out okay.
The irony here is that too much optimism can negatively impact a president’s performance in office. Our situation abroad might be a bit more stable today if the White House had been a bit less self-assured and spent more time setting up contingency plans in Iraq. The Democratic field for 2008 might look a bit different if people valued political experience (link) more and leaned less on candidates who dish out unadulterated hope (link). Look, I like Obama as much as the next guy. I might even vote for him. But in terms of leadership in government, he’s pretty much unproven.
There are positive points to this. The first is that unlike intelligence or qualifications, optimism is very hard to fake. In scripted speaking opportunities, politicians could potentially hire optimistic speech writers, but in debates a natural pessimist usually shines through. Talking optimistically requires such a shift in thinking that most people can’t fake it for an audience.
Does it make a difference, though? Optimists can make overconfident, although a wise leader will surround him- or herself with pessimistic advisors to balance out that tendency. Optimists also tend to be better salespeople, more persistent, and less likely to give up in the face of failure. Whereas pessimists may not see their ideas through in the face of outside disapproval, an optimist is more likely to persevere - an important quality in any visionary statesman.
References:
Zullow, H.M., & Seligman, M.E.P. (1990). Pessimistic Rumination Predicts Defeat of Presidential Candidates, 1900 to 1984. Psychological Inquiry, 1(1), 52-61.
Seligman, M.E. (2006). Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. Vintage.
