We All Would Like to Vote for the Best Man But He is Never a Candidate

"A man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart; a man who is still a socialist at age 40 has no mind."

(attributed variously to Churchill, Chesterton, Wilkie, etc., but was actually said by an obscure French official)

Some of you will be able to vote in your first presidential election this year, so I wanted to get your reaction to the above quote. I've always thought it was pithy and descriptive.

I grew up in a very conservative home in a very conservative state and went to very conservative schools, but I still voted for Bill Clinton right after graduating from college. I announced to my incredulous father that I just thought the Democrats cared more about people than the Republicans did. I know, I know--my logic was unassailable. Clinton was reelected; the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted; and I realized that Democrats (like most members of the political class) had more party loyalty than lofty principles.

Do you think it's true that people are more liberal when they are young and more conservative when they get older? If so, why? Does it ever go the other way--conservative youth and liberal age? Why would someone make that shift?

How do people choose their candidates? Is it political principles or personal charisma? One telling result from 2012's exit polls was the overwhelming percentage of people who said Obama was the candidate "who cares about people like me." We'd probably all like to think we make political choices based on pure reason, but for many of us, it's more complicated than that.