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Some presidential candidates do run because people around them recommended they do it enough. Most of the truly unwilling are from farther back in American history, however. Including at least one former president!
The more practical answer is the desire and ambition to run for president needs to be there as a prerequisite, but actually doing it and also the crucial question of timing actually does depend a great deal on the advice and wishes of people around you, as well as sometimes popular appeal. Obama was one of these! He wanted to wait a few more years (remember, his time as Senator was actually pretty paltry, traditional wisdom definitely said to wait). But a few things pushed him to do so sooner. For one, actually a bunch of Senate leaders said he should run, and might win, even if they weren't willing to endorse him because they didn't want to cross the Clintons. He had done a few events and saw how enthusiastic people were about him. Even got feted on a trip to Nigeria. So popular support does enter into the conversation.
I could go on. There's a long list of people who wanted to run, but only actually did so because of the people in their orbit. Jeb Bush was one. Of course, manifest destiny thinking and raw ambition is still more common. But it isn't universal. And in some ways, the idea that it's either-or is inherently contradictory. How do you think some of these politicians gain such egos? It isn't all inherent. If you go to enough campaign events and enough of what (to you, selection bias!!) seem to be random people tell you how much they love you, that does something. So yeah, in a sense, fellow citizens do play a role. See for example Biden's decision to run in 2020 was shaped by ego and manifest destiny thinking, but you can also see the role of random advisors and event attendees saying their piece too. He mistakenly started taking credit for Obama's wins as well.
And to be fair, voters deserve some of the blame. After all, Biden did not end up committing to a single term in 2020! Bet the party bigwigs wish they had extracted this concession, somehow.
I’d never thought about it in precisely those terms before but this has to be true. Having crowds of strangers tell me that they love and admire me would break my brain. It’s the ultimate superstimulus for a social species.
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