> I don't think the policy positions even matter that much, if you can make a strong case and gain the confidence of the electorate.
If this were true it would mean Americans are dumb as rock and don't really care about "boring", technocratic but important decisions like climate change, geopolitical alliances, etc. - and just want a showman to dazzle their softened brains.
This is obviously true and has been for decades. Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death from 01985 makes the case fairly strongly, but probably even stronger evidence is that the US apparently just elected as president a Twitter troll and reality-show TV host who doesn't know how to capitalize English and signed bills with a Sharpie in his previous presidential term.
Yes, I said that was obvious. Postman makes an excellent case that that's what happens when you reduce public discourse to entertainment.
Don't get complacent; the process producing European leaders like Putin, Zelenskyy, Orban, Meloni, and Erdoǧan is no better, nor other American leaders like Lula or Maduro, nor Modi. And, although Xi's path to power doesn't depend on how relatable his stories are about how he had difficulty climbing into a garbage truck, that process is flawed in other ways that are likely worse.
> just want a showman to dazzle their softened brains
Nietzsche made this case really strongly in his chapter/essay “The Flies in the Marketplace” back in the 1880s, and pretty well predicted how this would emerge play out half a century later in Germany. “ Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place,—and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour.”
If this were true it would mean Americans are dumb as rock and don't really care about "boring", technocratic but important decisions like climate change, geopolitical alliances, etc. - and just want a showman to dazzle their softened brains.