Emotions Now Rule the Political World

[Socialist Christian]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&ncid=536&e=6&u=/ap/20031120/ap_on_el_pr/emotional_candidates

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WASHINGTON - Three decades after misty eyes help sink Edmund Muskie's presidential campaign and shock treatment ended Thomas Eagleton's vice presidential bid, Democratic hopeful Howard Dean speaks about grief counseling and bouts of anxiety over his brother's disappearance in Southeast Asia.

Wesley Clark (news - web sites) chokes up over genocide. John Kerry (news - web sites) gets watery-eyed in a New Hampshire diner. John Edwards calls the death of his son "the undercurrent of my life." Even President Bush (news - web sites), the tough-on-terrorism commander in chief, has fought back tears in the Oval Office.


In this age of heart-on-your-sleeve politics, signs of emotion are no longer the kiss of political death and may even help breathe life into candidates in need of a human touch.


"It's become another element, another way, of making the public feel they know something they really don't know about a candidate," said Stanley Renshon, political scientist and psychoanalyst at the City University of New York.