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Admired People: Who and Why?
President Trump has been telling the world what to think via Twitter.
When the YouGov poll of 41 countries asking after the most admired men and women in the world for 2019 came out, I had to ask what it showed about the puissance of Trumpian tweets. Was the world listening?
This sort of polling used to be limited to the U.S. and Canada, resulting in the POTUS and First Lady always ranking high, usually number one in their gender categories. Those days are gone, and now people well known in China or India appear near the top. Entertainers generally do better than politicians.
Still, President Donald Trump comes in at 14 among men with First Lady Melania Trump at 19 among women. I can lose myself wondering how much of the result is name identification and if that does not explain the result what were those people thinking?
Bill Gates tops the men, and this seems rational. He’s a pleasant man who spent the first half of his life becoming fabulously wealthy and then resolved to spend the last half giving all that money away and urging other wealthy folks to do the same.
