Our politics depends more on personality rather than policy

Sam Smith - A major change in politics has been the move towards making one’s choices based on personality rather than policy. As the National Library of Medicine puts it:

Western democracies’ voting practices have altered recently, most notably with candidates now taking center stage at the expense of the institutions. These events are the result of a phenomenon called the personalization of politics. The present review aims to synthesize evidence regarding the impact of voters’ evaluation of candidates’ traits on political outcomes and the effects of voters’ traits on voting…. Data obtained suggests that political outcomes are heavily influenced by voters’ personality traits and how they perceive the personality traits of the candidates.

In other words, we are debating the character of individual candidates rather than where they stand on major issues, thus we are more interested in discussing Donald Trump than in dealing with his lousy attack on Iran or the cost of oil and gas. 

It’s a major reason our current politics are such a failure.