A common journalistic line in this campaign is that John Kerry lacks charisma. Backbone, maybe; charisma, I\u2019m not sure because I\u2019m not sure what charisma is. And I doubt many journalists can give us a clear definition or benchmarks we can touch that put push candidates off the charisma scale.<\/p>\n
But that doesn\u2019t stop them from writing about it ad nauseum. Let\u2019s face it: It\u2019s easier than trying to understand, interpret and report on policy matters.<\/p>\n
But this morning, the \u201cCampaign Desk\u201d from the Columbia J-School has an interesting retrospective<\/a> about what the press is saying now about Kerry and possible running mate Sen. John Edwards and what the press was saying four years ago when Kerry was being considered for the No. 2 slot by Al Gore. Seems like in the four years since, Kerry has gotten uglier, less charismatic, more wonkish and more “aloof, condescending and soporific.”<\/p>\n In a word, these stories aren\u2019t worth the price of newsprint, but reporters will keep on reporting them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A common journalistic line in this campaign is that John Kerry lacks charisma. Backbone, maybe; charisma, I\u2019m not sure because I\u2019m not sure what charisma is. And I doubt many journalists can give us a clear definition or benchmarks we can touch that put push candidates off the charisma scale. But that doesn\u2019t stop them… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}