That is what parent is challenging. You can of course disagree. I think it's an interesting point. How much damage do we do to ourselves by societally selecting charismatic people who speak eloquently as leaders (importantly: over other qualities)?

Unclear, but certainly not 0.

We evolved a natural tendency to like charismatic and funny people, because (I'm speculating) you need a high minimum level of broad cognitive competence to pull that off.

Things like empathy, quick thinking, emotional intelligence, a fresh perspective, broad knowledge of the world, a large vocabulary, and the self-confidence to go with your judgement calls are all involved in telling a single good joke to a crowd.

These are all fantastic things to see in a leader.

On an evolutionary scale, it's probably a little simpler than correlation with cognitive competence.

A group united towards a stupid purpose can be more effective than individuals acting towards more reasonable purposes. If this is true, you can select for both following (susceptibility) and leading (charisma).

I feel like the only characteristic needed to be a popular speaker is self-confidence. Have you seen most of the word salad coming out of Trump's mouth?

It’s word salad, but for his demographic, it’s a salad of carefully selected words they love, delivered with great warmth, charm, or aggression, as appropriate.

If you think that he is super charismatic (I agree, despite not liking him), are you also saying that he has a broad underlying intelligence?

I think to say that Donald Trump is anything but narrowly good at Charisma and personal marketing is a stretch.

But, what I’m saying is that charisma (and personal marketing for that matter) is by its nature a “wide” skill.

I wouldn’t give him an integral to solve but that’s not what a leader is supposed to do either.

I think a major world leader needs more than charisma but it’s one of the first requirements.

All of his 'success' is purely derived from charisma as far as I can tell. He isn't particularly adept at his prior career of real estate business given that he has under-performed in the markets he has participated in, and he had to commit felony fraud to do it. His biggest success is making people believe that he is more successful than he is.

What intellectually rigorous activity would you say he has an aptitude in?

Looking at the wildly hostile media coverage of him post-2015, you’d come away thinking he’s a major charlatan.

Looking at the glowing media coverage of him pre-2015, he seems like a unique business genius.

The truth is probably in between.

Business and marketing aren’t rigorous intellectual activities like math, but they are bloody hard in a different way - even with an inheritance (how many born-rich kids die 100x richer? Almost none). The problems are very fuzzy and open-ended, and frequently don’t even look like a problem.

You can’t consistently solve these problems profitably over many years without some skill.

I disagree. I know quite a few people who are incredibly charismatic, but exceptionally narrow in their cognitive competence. In fact, one of the problems that I would highlight about charisma is that it allows you to be get away with a lot more stupid shit than you would if you had to get by on other talents.

I agree with your point, but I think your examples are charming one-on-onenor in small groups only.

To be considered charming to a large group of people, like half the USA, you need to be conversant in things that are relevant to all of them. A narrow person can never have a wide appeal.

> How much damage do we do to ourselves by societally selecting charismatic people who speak eloquently as leaders

You're arguing a different point. This isn't about charisma. It's about a baseline level of communication.

I'm a Joe supporter but in recent interviews (like BET) there were two parts where I could not make out what he said after 10 rewinds.

One has to be practical. Some handicaps are seen by the majority as a negative for the job. You can’t tell them they are wrong for making it a requirement (after all, they hire the candidate).

To me, the role seems to be like 95% charisma as it's largely a figurehead position. Foreign relations, domestic relations, commander in chief of the armed forces are all mostly charismatic functions.

The smart but uncharismatic folks seem better suited to institutional roles where they can guide policy in the right direction without being the public face of the policy. It's not all that different from the distinction between sales and the folks that design/make the product; the groups are complementary but divergent.

We don't currently live in that theoretical universe, and won't any time soon.

The one we live in, it is a hard disqualification, and there's an election in 3 months.

We won't fix everything that is broken with how people select leaders in the next 3 months.

Winning elections is only a part of why the US President must be an effective communicator. Even with the greatest staff supporting them, poor communication will hamper their ability to do the job, especially in a crisis situation.