Likeability Factor

Who do you like? Which candidate for president would you feel most comfortable having dinner with? Who would you like to spend an hour with just shooting the breeze? Big Frank will give you his read on this. Remember, we are not talking about their political positions, their voting record, or the ideological stance - we are only talking about how likeable they are - are they good company - nice people? And let's rate them on a 1 to 5 scale where:

1. = toxic in many ways; keep them away from me
2.= extremely irritating; barely tolerable
3.= nothing really irritating, but nothing really attractive or enjoyable either
4.= very nice person - enjoyable to be with
5.= my best buddy; we've bonded - we're going out for coffee and they are coming to my birthday party

Republicans:

John McCain: John gets a 2; he's the kind of guy that everyone wants others to believe is nice, because he can play nice when he wants to. However, he has a nasty streak that when let loose is extremely illogical and obsessive - not to mention irritating. Also this thing with the quietly modulated tones and feign reasonableness is just a sham and an irritating one for when he goes into this drone it has a kind of hypnotic effect that lulls the listener into quiet and agreement. Then, only later, upon emerging from the trance does the listener realize that John pulled a fast one on them and monopolized the conversation with a lot of well-modulated platitudes that don't upon closer examination mean anything at all. You do NOT want to spend much time with him.

Mitt Romney: Mitt gets a 2 also; he's best described as a twit. He has a kind of irritating prissiness both in his mannerisms and also in his voice. He would be better tolerated as a phone friend than one whom you had to look at in person. So 2 in person, but 3 on the phone, texting, or e-mail. He would actually enhance his campaign by going virtual. While many might think his iconic/clip art good looks helps - it is more than undermined by his prissy twittiness. Mitt rhymes with Twit.

Ron Paul: Ron gets a solid 4. He is a good listener, never interrupts, doesn't go on and on and on and on like Mit and John, essentially filling every given moment with their patter. And, what Ron does say actually has some thought behind it, is consistent, and is refreshingly iconoclastic, which makes for good conversation. Ron would be fun to hang with.

Mike Huckabee: Mike gets a solid 3. I think of Mike as the outgoing, good-natured neighbor that you meet at a barbeque. He's affable enough and doesn't offend; although, the preacher in him while not exactly setting off alarm bells does make you wary. He's kind of like the well-dressed guys with backpacks who knock on your door. They would like you to think that they're just all-American nice kids striking up a conversation - but, they have an agenda! Well, Mike has one too, and he can't hide it forever. Mike sorta rhymes with hype.

Democrats (John Edwards is still included because his campaign isn't over it's just "suspended".

Hillary Clinton: Hillary gets a 2. She is like the character Mrs. Jellyby in Charles Dickens' Bleak House: she is so devoted to her special projects - currently becoming president in order to continue the Clinton dynasty, that she has no time or interest in anyone. She would be in the room with you but either answering the phone, dictating letters, or looking over your shoulder to see if there was a big donor behind you. Once it was discovered that you weren't a big lobbiest, big donor, big Democrat, or big anything - she would have no use for you and she would be gone.

Barack Obama: Barack gets a 3. He is the kind of guy that appears to be very likeable and everyone says, "He sure seems like a nice guy." However, when pressed nobody has ever really talked to him, been over to his house, had coffee, or really knows anything about him. He's that guy at the party that you see fleetingly in the corner listening to someone, and then when you next see him he's on his way out. He's in fact unapproachable but liked.

John Edwards: John gets a 4. The smile - it turns out, is real. He really is a nice guy. He knows how to listen, speaks his mind, and has a good sense of humor. In addition, he knows how to keep a conversation going because he isn't self-absorbed, preachy, or distracted. When he talks to you he is really with you. He'll even let you muss up his hair.

We The Storytellers

The sense we have of ourselves, of our connections to others, of our place in the world, and of the events within it come from stories. We need the stories; we create and consume them: we cannot live without them. Through them we view the past - and it is becoming more and more apparent that they also shape our futures.

"The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise ... but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us – for good and for ill. It is our stories, the storyteller, that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, what we are at our best, when we are our most creative." This is from Doris Lessing's Nobel Prize lecture upon receiving the Nobel Prize in literature.

And here is Reynolds Price: "A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens--second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths."

We honor the great storytellers with prizes. We pay money to buy their books; the "high" storytellers are thrust upon us at school - some continue to read them, others not ; the "low" storytellers fill our pulp fiction and its cousin the big screen, and the little screen of our livingrooms; stories fill our lunches with gossip; they cement our family connections (good ones have lots - deficient ones are lacking); and they help us justify our decisions - both right and wrong. Stories are the links between the impulses of our soul and the stumbling attempts of our rational mind to explain.

James Pennebaker in his book Opening Up reveals the important part that storytelling has in expressing emotion and healing. Pennebaker did experiments where he had students write for short periods of time on painful traumas of their lives, and contrasted them with other students who wrote on trivial matters. He found that there was a surprising amount of undisclosed trauma in these students' lives, and he also found that writing about it had healthy repercussions: both physically and psychologically. These experiments, which occurred some twenty years ago, have been repeately validated by others. Could it be that what is good for the individual's health and well-being is also true of a culture or society; perhaps it also needs its stories told in order to maintain its health.

And is it useful to note that what we ourselves put into these stories in many ways is more important than the events, the facts as it were, that inhabit them. Not only are we making sense of our pasts via our stories, but in more than one way we are creating our futures. The way that we view our lives is constantly undergoing revisions. The way we do this not only determines how we view ourselves, but has immense influence on our behavior. We really are creating ourselves through the stories we tell about ourselves.