More charisma

Ezra gets this point (about moderatly successful politicians) precisely backwards:

Meet Gray Davis, for instance, and you're unlikely to be blown away. Gary Hart is brilliant, but not very charismatic. And the average Congresscritter can be downright unimpressive. This is, in part, because safe districts tend to get decided on party nominations, and who gets a party's nomination has a lot more to do with workhorse, record, and personal favors than it does with magnetism. But I always find uncharismatic politicians surprising nevertheless.

I think the idea of a "moderately successful politician" is not contiguous with "a politician whose elected career tops out in sub-presidential offices like governor or senator". The idea is actually that, in the middle-and-higher-ranks of the American political landscape, moderate success is measured by accomplishment and, perhaps, by post-professional popularity. On that metric, Gray Davis and Gary Hart are total failures . They were high-level politicians with above average talent whose abilities to accomplish policy priorities and secure lasting legacies were utterly destroyed by (in large part) the fact that they were both completely lacking in charisma.