David Brooks had a piece in the Times recently contrasting “spreadsheet people” (hard edged quants) and “paragraph people” (mushy-headed liberal equivocators). A responsive letter in today’s Times pointed out that the intended beneficiary of the Brooks typology — one George W. Bush — is neither a spreadsheet person nor a paragraph person at all. He’s a PowerPoint person:

Bullet-point people traffic in the meaningless business-speak of the management consultant, language that eschews equally the nuance and hard numbers of reality. Bullet-point people can get by when confined to the ranks of mediocrity, but as the leader of our country, this bullet-point person is woefully ill equipped.

The letter writers commit an obvious mistake: they use “PowerPoint person” as a pejorative. My guess, though, is that being a PowerPoint person is Bush’s great strength. On the whole, the electorate are PowerPoint people, both left and right. The electorate want simplicity and clarity, not nuance and hard numbers. They just don’t have the patience for nuance. If the theory is right, then Bill Clinton won elections because he was a paragraph person who could sell himself as a PowerPoint person. Did the Democrats learn nothing from that man? Note to Democrats: Where do you want to go today, John Kerry? Fight Power(Point) with Power(Point). Master PowerPoint. Right now. Pace, Professor Tufte.