Even great villains

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Front » Election 2008 • News • Top Headlines

Classes held on Election Day, despite criticism


By: Fatima Wagdy
November 3, 2008
"Classes held on Election Day, despite criticism",

Election Day is right around the corner - an historic day that happens only once every four years. On such a day, some students ask: Should they even have class at all? The response from professors, apparently, has been an overwhelming, “Yes, you should.”

At Stanford, no specific policy exists that dictates whether or not class should be held on Election Day. Many students and professors agree that there is no need to cancel class next Tuesday, but other students feel that class should be canceled and that Election Day should be a national holiday.

Some believe canceling class would be unnecessary because of the demographics of Stanford students. Most Stanford students do not live close to their voting districts and would therefore have to vote absentee even if they lived in California. Many other students live out of state, so they would have to vote absentee anyway--.

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There’s also a distinction that needs to be made between a person’s personality characteristics & his leadership characteristics. If we were to judge all politicians on their publicly displayed personalities, most of them would probably rate pretty high. This is particularly true of presidential candidates, because in order to be a candidate for the presidency, you usually have to be able to portray yourself as somewhat charismatic. You have to have some kind of personal appeal, some kind of personality, the ability to relate to people & get along with people, because most Americans, at least, judge candidates more on their personalities than on the political issues they stand for.
On the other hand, when we are talking about someone’s leadership role & what they have accomplished or have not accomplished as a politician or leader, we are not necessarily criticising their personality & their personal traits of sympathy or kindness or tender-heartedness for their wife, their children & victims of natural disasters. Presidents & politicians & highly-placed leaders can appear to be very human & display some of the nicest, sweetest characteristics. That’s part of their job! Of course, such displays are often politically motivated, but sometimes they do show their natural disposition & personality coming out, which works to their political advantage.
So you need to realise that there is often more than meets the eye.There have been many human interest stories of even great villains who have shown themselves to be very sweet & kind with their wives or their children. People are just amazed & say, “Oh, how could that possibly be true when they were such villains?”