2004: Howard Dean's infamous yell

Here’s the broadcast: [this video] You can hear the crowd as well (maybe through his mic?). The thing watching this live on TV wasn’t the scream, but the gyrating hand movements and the gradual decent from a politician into a WWE wrestler voice as he’s naming a long list of states. The scream was actually more of a yippee kinda sound. But the disassociating thing for me was seeing him land a disappointing finish (3rd in Iowa) and then act like he’s a rock star about to headline a huge nationwide tour. Sitting at home, it’s like yeah, why don’t you try to win one first before you go bragging about how you’re going to win the next 10. So, for me it was the content + tone, not just the tone.

Although I believe there is value to the IQ metric, I agree with you that raw intelligence should not be the way we choose our governors/reps/etc. As if democracy didn't have enough struggles, telecommunications (and especially television) have forever changed the way that the people choose their representatives. Superficialities are much more important now than they were pre-1960, and everything we get is filtered through the media outlets that control the television broadcasts; if they dislike someone, all they have to do is repeatedly re-broadcast a single unflattering yelp and that person's prospects are done. [0] We need to learn to deal with that. [0] [this video]