How emotional should politicians get?

Drew Westen, the super smart American political scientist who wrote for The Spectator a few weeks back, has extracts of his new book on why leaders need to connect on an emotional as well as intellectual level in G2 today.

Westen makes a good case; there’s no doubt that much of the Republicans’ electoral success since 1968 can be chalked up to their superior ability to connect with voters on a gut level. But Westen goes too far when he suggests that Gore would have stood a better chance of being elected president if he had hit back during the 2000 debates when Bush questioned his honesty and called Bush a coward, a drunk, a crook, and a disgrace to his family, his state and his country.

This would have been a high-risk strategy and resulted in a landslide one way or the other. Maybe, now with people having soured so thoroughly on Bush it would be effective.