From what I have seen over the decades — I clearly remember the uncharismatic Eisenhower — the biggest reason a candidate needs charisma is that our unserious political journalists media desperately wants another JFK they can fall in love with or at least a candidate they can have fun or excitement covering. These are people who seriously talked about Bush being “more fun to have a beer with” as if that made him a better choice than Gore.
i remember the "uncharismatic" Eisenhower. he had enough charisma for me (and for landslide victories in two elections), but i have always loved competence. as for "falling in love with Kennedy" Gore Vidal had a photo of Kennedy on his wall "to memind me to never again fall in love with a President." I think he meand he was disenchanted, not bereaved.
Brilliant takedown. Of course Alterman is regarded as too much of a skunk at the party for the Times.
A socially useful fourth estate *simply would not have* a "discipline", specialty or genre called "Political Journalism". It might have "Governance Journalism", "Legislative Journalism", "Regulatory Journalism" including forward thinking pieces about how electoral outcomes could shape future outcomes and policy in these realms, but it would recognize that as a public serving news beat "Political Journalism" is worthless.
i dunno. Reagan, W, Trump....charisma? yes, I guess. but is that what we need? to win, probably. but then what? I guess I am not the typical voter: ask my friends, if you can find any.
But we could use a little competence, or honesty, or actual knowledge and compassion...which, beyond empty sympathy, is understanding that if the people suffer, the country suffers...or maybe even something more important: the whole point of governmnent is that it is, in theory, the cooperation of the people to lessen their own suffering and that of others (maybe the whole point of life, if you believe in such a thing).
Unfortunately, all of that can be faked. That's what con-men do. because it works. people are dupes. even I, my friends.
Fantastic piece. Important piece. And all of us whose political outlooks were profoundly and permanently shaped by October 1962, even if we were in diapers, know that charisma + substance exist. And we shouldn't settle for less.
Many historians believe that JFK’s overconfidence, lack of preparedness and refusal to listen to advisors led to his disastrous first summit with Kruschev and that that disaster was a significant cause of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Krushchev believed, not unreasonably, that he could push Kennedy around.
“JFK Was Completely Unprepared For His Summit with Khrushchev
Kennedy had gotten by on his charisma. Luckily for the world he was not so arrogant that he refused to learn from his mistakes and was able to work with Krushchev to make a deal. It was also lucky for the world that Krushchev was far more rational than he pretended. He agreed to let Kennedy save face by allowing him to wait several months before qietyly removing our missiles from Turkey. Krushchev was well aware that the deal he made end his power but he did it anyway.
She is also smart but I worry she is out of touch with Democrats in swing districts. I wish she would stop primarying fellow Dems. Except in true blue districts her candidates didn’t succeed, causing unnecessary division. Like it or not if she wants to become more influential she needs to be more of a team player.
i love AOC but she has been wrong about issues i take seriously..one of which i actually know something about, it's not a matter of being a team player, it's a matter of thinking beyond the soundbites....not just to cheer on your base, but to actually solve problems, and maybe have a little humility before calling accusing your President of genocide when he takes a little longer to solve a difficult problem than you think he should have. Biden made a little speech about the cease fire in gaza that should at least give people something to think about.
From comments i have read: Trump did ot get more votes this time than he did last time, but Harris got less than Biden did...suggesting that we may now have Trump for president because the morally pure Left stayed home and did not vote.
I agree with the fact that D's aren't factoring in charisma in presidential candidates. This 'X' factor will emerge spontaneously. We cannot engineer it. However, we can rebuild our infrastructure in all fifty states. We can provide a foundation of political support that will allow a charismatic candidate to emerge and to prevail nationally. I mean, somebody could pop up in Alabama for all we know.
Of course, they do it for evil, but R's have Trump's back. We should not turn into a cult like that, but we should work hard to find, develop and train D talent. Starting with city council, we should be supporting D politicians over time as they work their way up. We must support good people who want to be Democrats in red states! Texas has 40 electoral college votes for God sakes. Stop leaving those votes on the table.
I have met Beto O'Rourke. And I have experienced the palatable electricity of one of his rallies. He has charisma. What he did not have for national purposes was the deep political experience and sharp elbows one develops over time in local politics. Obama managed to catapult over all the steps in the ladder, so Beto probably thought he could too. I noticed in the Texas Senate race as Beto was drawing larger crowds than him, Trump zeroed in on Beto's potential and immediately began cutting him down on Twitter. Texas R's quickly got their machine going to aid and abet Trump. What might have happened if there was a strong Texas Democratic Party that had Beto's back in the Senate race?
Without a serious focus on strategy and tactics and an aggressive push to take the fight to R's, we D's are fighting with one hand tied behind our back.
i think i agree with all that. but here's the thing" we voted for Carter. Clinton, Obama, and Biden...all of them had charisma of sorts, and they even did some good for the country, and through ignorance they also did some harm, but mainly the good they did did not manifest itself as a solution to the problems of the poor or the newly poor. This is probably because of difficult to solve "historical forces" but also, as far as I can see, because presidents and their advisors seem to be more intersted in "politics" than real problems. I think if we found someone with solutions that real people could feel in their own lives, charisma would take care of itself. We have the advantage that at least Democrats say they are on the good guys side. The R's proudly proclaim they are on the bad guy's side. After being disappointed by the good guys for fifty years the voters have decided to try the bad guys. brute force has its charms if you are on the winning side.
as an aside..from the work i have tried to do, I find the Left, though well intentioned almost as ignorant of things as the Right, and especially disappointing to me, they seem perfectly happy to talk as if they would be happy if everone lived on welfare...paid for by the rich...as the rich claim they are. i think most workers don't really like that prospect, but as things are going they would be willing to settle for it. mostly what they do is hate the people they believe are living on welfare paid for by themselves (the workers).
I concur about charisma taking care of itself. I think the author's point about charisma was that D's keep assuming voters will review the candidate's resume, compare it to the job and conclude they should vote for him or her on that basis. But, voters love charisma. D's shouldn't discount that.
I think both you and I are alluding to the fact that in addition to the charisma issue, D's ground game sucks. Here in Texas, I don't think D's are on board with creating a class of people dependent on welfare. Maybe people talk like that elsewhere.
D's don't identify with workers as they did before Reagan. Workers don't feel heard by Democrats even though our policies are way better for them than Republicans' policies. To me, this is akin to the author's point about charisma. D's aren't understanding they have to connect on a personal level with voters. At least Trump does that, albeit as part of a con that triggers their worst instincts. Democrats need to channel FDR's message about the dignity of work and how everyone deserves a fair chance at that.
thank you for reply. my remark on the Left saying [not out loud in so many words] that it wants welfare for all comes out of my experience trying to tell people that Social Security can be fixed by raising the payroll tax about a dollar per week per year for a few years while real incomes will be going up about ten dollars per week per year. Almost universally people on the Left accuse me of being a shill for the rich. They think saving an extra dollar per week to pay for their own groceries when they can no longer work is "unfair." they want to "make the rich pay"...even though when FDR invented Social Security he was careful to avoid exactly this "so no damn politician can take it away from them."
Then, just recently the bipartisan Congress raised benefits for people who were already fairly well off..at the expense of having to cut benefits for everyone in just a few years. The whole story takes too long to tell here, but it told me the Congress...both Left and Right.. does not know what it is doing or doesn't care.
I think politicians think only about politics, so they don't know enough about anything else to have anything to say except what they think their base and their campaign contributers want to hear. the people don't know what to think because everything they hear does not make sense...like an advertising jingle..and they don't have the time or knowledge base to study it themselves. They don't say they want welfare for all, but that is what is implied by what they do say.
Charisma...sure... but you said yourself that will emerge spontaneously if a leader shows up who knows what he is doing, but until that happens the people will follow a leader who sounds like he knows what he is doing.
I’m thinking Josh Stein of PA. I’d love Pete Buddiegieg but there’s way too much hatred out there by the MAGAs and unfortunately that hatred will bring them out in droves.
was unable to reply to a comment becasuse your machine insisted i "update my profile". can we do without the junior high school games, or at least get a site designer who can at least allow us to post a comment we have taken the trouble to write before making us play its games?
Unfortunately to a large extent I will repeat what I said in a response to an earlier article. No one, not even Paul Waldman, can convince me that Trump is charismatic. Look at the faces of his supporters at his 2024 events. No, people want to be like Trump and they are buying what he is selling. Trump is as bad as he wants to be and yet he is successful. He doesn't have to be normal and he can play by his own rules. And Trump screams an "us vs. them" philosophy that his supporters adore. I voted twice for Obama and Bill Clinton but I don't think that they could win today. Reagan could not win with the current voters. However it it isn't hopeless because even with the favorable judges and SC justices, billionaire pals, X, and an MIA main stream press, Trump's win was not a blowout. A lot of people want normal and a government that strives to work for everyone. Could a candidate with more charisma gotten more Dems and Independents out of their homes to vote? Maybe. Probably. But I am not convinced it would have been enough to win in 2024. And considering all of the headwinds against any future Dem candidate, I do agree that A+ charisma is one of the things needed to win.
I would not call fpotus's appeal as charismatic. Charismatic means charm. Fpotus has zero charm. I call his speaking style bombastic, ostentatious, and pompous. Like a loud and excited preacher-conman, which describes him quite well. Democrats absolutely need future candidates with real charisma - charm, but not smarm. The style of speech and kinds of views exhibited by Governors Gavin Newsom and Josh Shapiro, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, House members Jasmine Crockett, AOC, Maxwell Frost, and Greg Casar, and Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow. Loud, proud, liberal, and very much charismatic.
I have seen Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford. I was too young to appreciate charisma in any of them but Ike was the most impressive of the three. I was eight years old selling newspapers on the street in San Francisco in 1964 when the republican convention took place at the Cow Palace. I was standing by the Post St. entrance to the St. Francis Hotel when a big black car pulled up to the kerb and four men got out. Ike walked ahead of his SS men and glanced at me in passing, I wanted to give him a free paper but I was too shocked to speak.
I agree fully, Paul. To understand charisma, however, which is a very deep concept, I highly recommend Wendy Brown's new Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber. It focuses on Weber's Vocations lectures of 1917 and 1918, and takes a plunge as well into Economy and Society regarding bureacracy.
I'm almost done with a review essay, from my perches as a social worker and a sociologist who once shook Barack Obama's left hand for it seemed ions at a volunteer rally in Cleveland in 2004, after having given Bill Quigley's Ending Poverty as We Know It to an aide.
I am almost done with a review essay of Brown's book and Jonathan Foiles' Reading Arendt in the waiting room, which also discusses nihilism. Although Brown doesn't mention charisma in her Winter 2025 Dissent piece, A Party Out of Touch, nor did Michael Kazin's piece in the same issue, Toward a Revival of Left Populism, as you surely know charisma is much more than personal appeal. It involves getting in touch with the deep desires of the people by having your own deep vision. It did not quite work for either Senators Bennet or Brown in 2020 but I think they have what it takes, as may Governor Whitmire. As for nihilism itself, last night, in talking with my students I concluded nihilism was a symptom of social change that is at that same time too fast and too slow, resulting in a disconnect with any coherent set of values.
From what I have seen over the decades — I clearly remember the uncharismatic Eisenhower — the biggest reason a candidate needs charisma is that our unserious political journalists media desperately wants another JFK they can fall in love with or at least a candidate they can have fun or excitement covering. These are people who seriously talked about Bush being “more fun to have a beer with” as if that made him a better choice than Gore.
These articles make that plain:
“Going After Gore”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/10/gore200710
“The Times’ Frank Bruni, or How to Succeed in Journalism Without Really Caring (About Issues)”
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/think-again-the-times-frank-bruni-or-how-to-succeed-in-journalism-without-really-caring-about-issues/
Theodora
i remember the "uncharismatic" Eisenhower. he had enough charisma for me (and for landslide victories in two elections), but i have always loved competence. as for "falling in love with Kennedy" Gore Vidal had a photo of Kennedy on his wall "to memind me to never again fall in love with a President." I think he meand he was disenchanted, not bereaved.
sorry for the typos. an edit function that would allow me to fix them would be nice.
memind = remind
meand = meant
Brilliant takedown. Of course Alterman is regarded as too much of a skunk at the party for the Times.
A socially useful fourth estate *simply would not have* a "discipline", specialty or genre called "Political Journalism". It might have "Governance Journalism", "Legislative Journalism", "Regulatory Journalism" including forward thinking pieces about how electoral outcomes could shape future outcomes and policy in these realms, but it would recognize that as a public serving news beat "Political Journalism" is worthless.
i dunno. Reagan, W, Trump....charisma? yes, I guess. but is that what we need? to win, probably. but then what? I guess I am not the typical voter: ask my friends, if you can find any.
But we could use a little competence, or honesty, or actual knowledge and compassion...which, beyond empty sympathy, is understanding that if the people suffer, the country suffers...or maybe even something more important: the whole point of governmnent is that it is, in theory, the cooperation of the people to lessen their own suffering and that of others (maybe the whole point of life, if you believe in such a thing).
Unfortunately, all of that can be faked. That's what con-men do. because it works. people are dupes. even I, my friends.
Fantastic piece. Important piece. And all of us whose political outlooks were profoundly and permanently shaped by October 1962, even if we were in diapers, know that charisma + substance exist. And we shouldn't settle for less.
Oct '62?
Cuban missile crisis.
Thank you. I had forgotten all about it. I was in college then. Did not particulaly like the idea of having a nuclear war. Or any war.
Many historians believe that JFK’s overconfidence, lack of preparedness and refusal to listen to advisors led to his disastrous first summit with Kruschev and that that disaster was a significant cause of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Krushchev believed, not unreasonably, that he could push Kennedy around.
“JFK Was Completely Unprepared For His Summit with Khrushchev
'He just beat the hell out of me,' Kennedy said.”
https://www.history.com/news/kennedy-krushchev-vienna-summit-meeting-1961
Kennedy had gotten by on his charisma. Luckily for the world he was not so arrogant that he refused to learn from his mistakes and was able to work with Krushchev to make a deal. It was also lucky for the world that Krushchev was far more rational than he pretended. He agreed to let Kennedy save face by allowing him to wait several months before qietyly removing our missiles from Turkey. Krushchev was well aware that the deal he made end his power but he did it anyway.
Theodora
Thank you for reminding us. I was thinking of saying something along those lines, but was not sure enough of my facts [or memory].
AOC is currently the most charismatic politician in the American—perhaps, even, global—arena.
She is also smart but I worry she is out of touch with Democrats in swing districts. I wish she would stop primarying fellow Dems. Except in true blue districts her candidates didn’t succeed, causing unnecessary division. Like it or not if she wants to become more influential she needs to be more of a team player.
theodora
i love AOC but she has been wrong about issues i take seriously..one of which i actually know something about, it's not a matter of being a team player, it's a matter of thinking beyond the soundbites....not just to cheer on your base, but to actually solve problems, and maybe have a little humility before calling accusing your President of genocide when he takes a little longer to solve a difficult problem than you think he should have. Biden made a little speech about the cease fire in gaza that should at least give people something to think about.
From comments i have read: Trump did ot get more votes this time than he did last time, but Harris got less than Biden did...suggesting that we may now have Trump for president because the morally pure Left stayed home and did not vote.
biden spech gaza ceasefire
worth thinking about
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-biden-delivers-remarks-on-start-of-gaza-ceasefire-and-release-of-israeli-hostages
Hakeem Jeffries?
He's good at doing things in the House but that doesn't necessarily translate to the White House.
I agree with the fact that D's aren't factoring in charisma in presidential candidates. This 'X' factor will emerge spontaneously. We cannot engineer it. However, we can rebuild our infrastructure in all fifty states. We can provide a foundation of political support that will allow a charismatic candidate to emerge and to prevail nationally. I mean, somebody could pop up in Alabama for all we know.
Of course, they do it for evil, but R's have Trump's back. We should not turn into a cult like that, but we should work hard to find, develop and train D talent. Starting with city council, we should be supporting D politicians over time as they work their way up. We must support good people who want to be Democrats in red states! Texas has 40 electoral college votes for God sakes. Stop leaving those votes on the table.
I have met Beto O'Rourke. And I have experienced the palatable electricity of one of his rallies. He has charisma. What he did not have for national purposes was the deep political experience and sharp elbows one develops over time in local politics. Obama managed to catapult over all the steps in the ladder, so Beto probably thought he could too. I noticed in the Texas Senate race as Beto was drawing larger crowds than him, Trump zeroed in on Beto's potential and immediately began cutting him down on Twitter. Texas R's quickly got their machine going to aid and abet Trump. What might have happened if there was a strong Texas Democratic Party that had Beto's back in the Senate race?
Without a serious focus on strategy and tactics and an aggressive push to take the fight to R's, we D's are fighting with one hand tied behind our back.
cynthia
i think i agree with all that. but here's the thing" we voted for Carter. Clinton, Obama, and Biden...all of them had charisma of sorts, and they even did some good for the country, and through ignorance they also did some harm, but mainly the good they did did not manifest itself as a solution to the problems of the poor or the newly poor. This is probably because of difficult to solve "historical forces" but also, as far as I can see, because presidents and their advisors seem to be more intersted in "politics" than real problems. I think if we found someone with solutions that real people could feel in their own lives, charisma would take care of itself. We have the advantage that at least Democrats say they are on the good guys side. The R's proudly proclaim they are on the bad guy's side. After being disappointed by the good guys for fifty years the voters have decided to try the bad guys. brute force has its charms if you are on the winning side.
as an aside..from the work i have tried to do, I find the Left, though well intentioned almost as ignorant of things as the Right, and especially disappointing to me, they seem perfectly happy to talk as if they would be happy if everone lived on welfare...paid for by the rich...as the rich claim they are. i think most workers don't really like that prospect, but as things are going they would be willing to settle for it. mostly what they do is hate the people they believe are living on welfare paid for by themselves (the workers).
I concur about charisma taking care of itself. I think the author's point about charisma was that D's keep assuming voters will review the candidate's resume, compare it to the job and conclude they should vote for him or her on that basis. But, voters love charisma. D's shouldn't discount that.
I think both you and I are alluding to the fact that in addition to the charisma issue, D's ground game sucks. Here in Texas, I don't think D's are on board with creating a class of people dependent on welfare. Maybe people talk like that elsewhere.
D's don't identify with workers as they did before Reagan. Workers don't feel heard by Democrats even though our policies are way better for them than Republicans' policies. To me, this is akin to the author's point about charisma. D's aren't understanding they have to connect on a personal level with voters. At least Trump does that, albeit as part of a con that triggers their worst instincts. Democrats need to channel FDR's message about the dignity of work and how everyone deserves a fair chance at that.
Cynthia
thank you for reply. my remark on the Left saying [not out loud in so many words] that it wants welfare for all comes out of my experience trying to tell people that Social Security can be fixed by raising the payroll tax about a dollar per week per year for a few years while real incomes will be going up about ten dollars per week per year. Almost universally people on the Left accuse me of being a shill for the rich. They think saving an extra dollar per week to pay for their own groceries when they can no longer work is "unfair." they want to "make the rich pay"...even though when FDR invented Social Security he was careful to avoid exactly this "so no damn politician can take it away from them."
Then, just recently the bipartisan Congress raised benefits for people who were already fairly well off..at the expense of having to cut benefits for everyone in just a few years. The whole story takes too long to tell here, but it told me the Congress...both Left and Right.. does not know what it is doing or doesn't care.
I think politicians think only about politics, so they don't know enough about anything else to have anything to say except what they think their base and their campaign contributers want to hear. the people don't know what to think because everything they hear does not make sense...like an advertising jingle..and they don't have the time or knowledge base to study it themselves. They don't say they want welfare for all, but that is what is implied by what they do say.
Charisma...sure... but you said yourself that will emerge spontaneously if a leader shows up who knows what he is doing, but until that happens the people will follow a leader who sounds like he knows what he is doing.
I hear what you're saying, coberly. I do see what you are getting at.
thanks
I’m thinking Josh Stein of PA. I’d love Pete Buddiegieg but there’s way too much hatred out there by the MAGAs and unfortunately that hatred will bring them out in droves.
Josh Atein is NC. Josh Shapiro is PA. He's the charismatic one.
Correct. My bad.
Waldman,
was unable to reply to a comment becasuse your machine insisted i "update my profile". can we do without the junior high school games, or at least get a site designer who can at least allow us to post a comment we have taken the trouble to write before making us play its games?
Unfortunately to a large extent I will repeat what I said in a response to an earlier article. No one, not even Paul Waldman, can convince me that Trump is charismatic. Look at the faces of his supporters at his 2024 events. No, people want to be like Trump and they are buying what he is selling. Trump is as bad as he wants to be and yet he is successful. He doesn't have to be normal and he can play by his own rules. And Trump screams an "us vs. them" philosophy that his supporters adore. I voted twice for Obama and Bill Clinton but I don't think that they could win today. Reagan could not win with the current voters. However it it isn't hopeless because even with the favorable judges and SC justices, billionaire pals, X, and an MIA main stream press, Trump's win was not a blowout. A lot of people want normal and a government that strives to work for everyone. Could a candidate with more charisma gotten more Dems and Independents out of their homes to vote? Maybe. Probably. But I am not convinced it would have been enough to win in 2024. And considering all of the headwinds against any future Dem candidate, I do agree that A+ charisma is one of the things needed to win.
I would not call fpotus's appeal as charismatic. Charismatic means charm. Fpotus has zero charm. I call his speaking style bombastic, ostentatious, and pompous. Like a loud and excited preacher-conman, which describes him quite well. Democrats absolutely need future candidates with real charisma - charm, but not smarm. The style of speech and kinds of views exhibited by Governors Gavin Newsom and Josh Shapiro, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, House members Jasmine Crockett, AOC, Maxwell Frost, and Greg Casar, and Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow. Loud, proud, liberal, and very much charismatic.
I have seen Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford. I was too young to appreciate charisma in any of them but Ike was the most impressive of the three. I was eight years old selling newspapers on the street in San Francisco in 1964 when the republican convention took place at the Cow Palace. I was standing by the Post St. entrance to the St. Francis Hotel when a big black car pulled up to the kerb and four men got out. Ike walked ahead of his SS men and glanced at me in passing, I wanted to give him a free paper but I was too shocked to speak.
I agree fully, Paul. To understand charisma, however, which is a very deep concept, I highly recommend Wendy Brown's new Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber. It focuses on Weber's Vocations lectures of 1917 and 1918, and takes a plunge as well into Economy and Society regarding bureacracy.
I'm almost done with a review essay, from my perches as a social worker and a sociologist who once shook Barack Obama's left hand for it seemed ions at a volunteer rally in Cleveland in 2004, after having given Bill Quigley's Ending Poverty as We Know It to an aide.
I am almost done with a review essay of Brown's book and Jonathan Foiles' Reading Arendt in the waiting room, which also discusses nihilism. Although Brown doesn't mention charisma in her Winter 2025 Dissent piece, A Party Out of Touch, nor did Michael Kazin's piece in the same issue, Toward a Revival of Left Populism, as you surely know charisma is much more than personal appeal. It involves getting in touch with the deep desires of the people by having your own deep vision. It did not quite work for either Senators Bennet or Brown in 2020 but I think they have what it takes, as may Governor Whitmire. As for nihilism itself, last night, in talking with my students I concluded nihilism was a symptom of social change that is at that same time too fast and too slow, resulting in a disconnect with any coherent set of values.
I will post my essay to the Reviews section of my substack Speaking from the Heart https://michaelalandover.substack.com/ with a link at the top of my Table of Contents. Several of Paul's pieces and one of his books are mentioned in my Election Analysis bibliography and commentary in the Beats section: https://michaelalandover.substack.com/p/2024-election-analysis.
It echoes the insights about the responses of those who listened to the Nixon/Kennedy debates on radio vs those who watched it on television.
Wes Moore. He has it.
He certainly does.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-biden-delivers-remarks-on-start-of-gaza-ceasefire-and-release-of-israeli-hostages
Theodora
Thank you for reminding us. I was thinking of saying something along those lines, but was not sure enough of my facts [or memory].