Why Obama's Inaugural Realism Promises Great Things: New York Magazine
Monday, January 26, 2009 at 6:00AM 
Among political strategists, it’s an article of faith that the most optimistic candidate wins the election. This assumption isn’t based on focus-group hoodoo, but the work of the renowned psychologist Martin Seligman and his then-colleague Harold Zullow, who in 1990 systematically analyzed 84 years’ worth of acceptance speeches of the major presidential candidates for their party’s nominations. In 18 out of 22 instances, the man with the cheerier message carried the day.
In light of this finding, Barack Obama’s inaugural address stood out as a startling bit of counterprogramming. Not only did he give voice to our flagging national morale (“a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable”), he dared point out that some of this mess is of our own unlovely making (“our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age”). more
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