This is very short - but you're all welcome to comment and use this as an Open Thread.
There can be a big difference in the perception of a candidate and that candidate's capacity to communicate with the people he or she must represent. Some candidates are bolstered by their party's media machines, building upon propaganda & hype (and, to an extent, depending upon the fungibility of Etch-a-Sketch resets), while others simply manage to excel & succeed with quiet confidence through competence.
Case in point:
Barack Obama signed to a deaf kid. George W. Bush waved to Stevie Wonder.1
What candidate - and what party - would
you prefer to have representing you in office?
Personally, I'm kinda partial to the president who can communicate with folks in their own language, esp. when that's in addition to the language he communicates with me in.
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1 No, George W. Bush did not wave at Stevie Wonder, but what Snopes doesn't go into is the incident where Bush chided a legally blind reporter for wearing shades. So, substituting the "Bush waved to Stevie Wonder" phrase as representative of the faux pas, while technically wrong on the specific incident, is still illustrative of a relatively similar - and embarassing - Bushism.