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Where's the Empathy?

Low Emotional IQ

David Frum

Updated Apr. 21, 2017 3:10PM ET / Published Oct. 17, 2012 1:30PM ET 

One of my takeaways from last night:

President Obama didn't thank the voter who opened by saying he voted for Obama in 2008. Instead, the president launched immediately into a programmatic answer - exactly as he did with the woman at the town hall who confessed she was weary of defending the president.

Have we ever had a pair of presidential candidates with so much combined intelligence - and yet so little affinity for their fellow human creatures?

Would it really be too difficult to say, "Thank you" or - even, let's go crazy here - pose a brief follow-up question that showed some interest in the individual man or woman before them as something more than a prop to support the next prefabricated set piece answer?

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