"As always with Obama, it's a question of who the rubes really are. It's the power of glamour."

Writes Glenn Reynolds, quoting me — and possibly implying that I'm one of the rubes. On "glamour," he links to this, from Virginia Postrel. Postrel makes a distinction between "charisma" —"a personal quality that inspires followers to embrace the charismatic leader's agenda" – and "glamour" — which "encourages the audience to project its own yearnings onto the glamorous figure."

When voters motivated by charisma disagree with the leader they've backed, they support him anyway and possibly even change their minds about the right policy course. When voters motivated by glamour disagree, they become disillusioned and angry.

But then why haven't Obama's supporters gotten mad?

I have to think psychological phenomena are far more complex. It can't be that there really is a substance "charisma" and a substance "glamour" that one can possess and that have specific, different effects on other people.

And does it really help to use those terms — with their weird roots in religion and witchcraft?

It might be better to think about the difference between a leader and a figurehead. (Obama's potential as a figurehead is much more apparent than his potential as a leader.) But I think you can get angry and disillusioned at either.

What does any of this have to do with who ought to be considered a "rube"?

I think Glenn is alluding to Obama's shot at those people in "small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest" who "get bitter [and] cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

The idea seems to be that what really makes you a rube is not where you live but whether your politics spring from unexamined emotions.

If that's what his gnomish concision is about, let me say that I didn't vote for Obama in the primary because I projected a dopey enthusiasm onto a glamorous blank screen. Forced to choose between Clinton and Obama, I voted for Obama — even though he stated positions that were farther from what I want than Clinton's — because I thought he had more mental flexibility and pragmatism, that he was more likely absorb and process evidence and advice and exercise sound judgment.

ADDED: Glenn, being less gnomishly concise, explicitly strikes my name from the list of possible rubes.