Why Do We Expect Presidential Candidates To Be Nice?

Anne Applebaum writes:

But in order to become the candidate, both also had to make a series of utterly ruthless decisions, decisions that most nice guys would find unpalatable. I don’t care what a helpful father Michelle says he is, there is absolutely no sense in which Obama’s presidential campaign—or, should it come to it, Obama’s presidency—is good for Obama’s children. Neither is there a scenario under which Cindy McCain, who always looks profoundly uncomfortable in the limelight, is ever going to relax and enjoy her husband’s golden retirement years. Anyone who was ever closely associated with either candidate is now at risk of unpleasant media exposure. No one who works for them right now has job security, and no one who knows them can expect any favors.

Think hard, as well, about what a presidential campaign truly demands of a candidate. To become president, you must love talking about yourself: Talk, talk, brag and talk, every day, every evening, on national television, in the company of newspaper reporters, in every spare moment, and not just for a few days or weeks but for years and years on end. If you don’t crave attention; if you don’t long for adulation; if you don’t, at some level, feel you are God’s gift to the American people, then you don’t run for president at all.

And yet despite the existence of this extraordinarily harsh, ruthless presidential selection system, Americans, possibly uniquely among democratic nations, do at some level expect their leaders to be nice. I’m convinced George W. Bush became president in part because he seemed nice—refreshingly inarticulate, just like the rest of us—even though his former associates often admit that he isn’t nice at all. It was once said of Ronald Reagan that his career proved the limitations of charm: If you turn it on for the public, you don’t have much left over in private.