A student just said that Obama was elected to the presidency twice because of his “moral character.” I don’t know what to respond because I have no idea what this means.
Moral Character
Opinions, art, debate
Opinions, art, debate
A student just said that Obama was elected to the presidency twice because of his “moral character.” I don’t know what to respond because I have no idea what this means.
Clarissa's Blog 
Charism?
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Charisma can be deeply immoral, though. I hear Ted Bundy was hugely charismatic.
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Charisma is often very dangerous.
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He doesn’t have a moustache. And he got a joke Nobel Peace Prize.
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A very nasty joke, I might add.
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What can I say ? I am still working on good improvised political jokes.
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Argh, you were referring to the peace prize itself. Time to go to sleep I think, too tired to think.
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No, your joke was great. The Peace Prize, however. . .
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I can think of reasons people might say “moral character.” (Boring shit like he’s never been divorced, he’s not committing public adultery, he’s a “family” man, he loves his children and his dog, etc. You could say the same about Romney except for the bit about the dog, maybe.) I’ve never heard anyone say they voted for Obama because of his “moral character.” You should ask this student what they mean by it. All I can say is they gave the Peace Prize to Kissinger (a warmonger if there ever was one) and passed on Gandhi so I think the committee’s judgment is questionable.
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I agree with Shakti – by moral character the student could be referring to many things maybe they think he stuck to the principles he claimed to have during the election and followed through on promises, maybe it’s because he isn’t known to be cheating on his wife. So asking them to explain further what they mean on it wouldn’t be unreasonable.
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Clearly they mean the one wife, one house, one car, no scandals thing. Except that people who voted for Obama weren’t voting for him for those reasons.
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I hope so. Because that would be a pretty bizarre reason to vote for somebody.
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Is this a trick question? It’s so obvious….
Here ‘moral character’ doesn’t refer to the candidate but to the voter, who gets to self-idenitfy as having ‘moral character’ by voting for Obama.
Remember, the great majority of people don’t vote for candidates they vote for themselves (as they believe they are or as they aspire to be).
Issues =/= diddly squat
Identity = red hot
(the formulas are pop music references that you might not get, but some of your readers probably will.
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http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/americans.html
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Wow. This is a brilliant insight. So people attain a certain vision of themselves by investing a candidate with certain qualities. Fascinating. I knew most voters weren’t analyzing the candidates’ positions on issues.
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I think that’s why people start going on about “likeability” and then start referring to things which seem totally bizarre. People who say “Candidate X is the guy I’d like to have a beer with (never mind that he can’t touch beer because he’s alcoholic)” are not really talking about charm.
But to be fair, the campaigns routinely flood people with garbage non-information that poses as information. Candidate’s positions on issues often change during the campaign so which one is the one they’ll take when actually in office? Most people don’t have the inclination or the time to sort through that information, so they go to their heuristics (he’s an immigrant like me, she was a homemaker, he likes to skeet shoot, I don’t like the face he makes when answering this question, etc) to make their decision.
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