It is a requirement for the job of being a national politician.
You have to be able to win elections at that level, and there's no participation trophies for feel-good runs by someone with a handicap, you just lose.
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)?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unclear, but certainly not 0.