Courage and Charisma
…The sine qua non for success*
Our thesis: In today’s politics in the US, left may not equal right politically, but when it comes to required personal traits to succeed, they are quite the same. Traditional attributes of the successful politician include assessing the desires of the likely voters, wordsmithing away the buzz words and truths that annoy their chosen slice of the electorate, fearlessly facing the crowd when delivering the message, and sporting a real or phony likable façade. Leaders have been our leaders because they possessed an ample supply of those qualities and had staff who helped them dodge missteps that can spell the end of a career.
Crossroads: Today, our legislative leaders noticeably lack at least one vital capacity. The left is failing to put out front their most charismatic personalities. We see bland, boring, flat, uninteresting, solemn, lackadaisical, and perfunctory performances. Those on the right who still believe in regular order and the norms of our institutions are cowering behind electoral challenge threats from monied interests and physical security fears for themselves and their families. On a personal level, that’s quite understandable, but it does not well serve the nation. To level the playing field, I have supported the notion that the left should fight the silliness that captures the attention of voters with more of the same – not trying to outdo with lies but to cast the truth in attention-grabbing mimicry using the bizarre baloney style of the fanatics on the right. It is too late to worry about insulting the intelligence of the audience. No one can be insulted until their attention is captured and then content needs to supersede affront.
Some baloney: For example, why not speak to the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Point out that America, the name, comes from misattribution to a foreigner, the Italian Amerigo Vespucci, who emigrated to Spain. He was an alien and immigrant in Spain who never even laid eyes on anything north of Haiti. Not only that, but Vespucci waited until he was over 50 years old to marry a woman 19 years his junior who was the daughter of a famous Spanish military man. They had no children. Could that have been a marriage for appearances only, to gain favor with the powerful elite? Should we question Amerigo’s gender identity and “his” pronouns? If we are going to rename major map features, even a hint of what is now being censored out of all government programs and pronouncements should be avoided, right? We could tell the people of the nations of the southern hemisphere that they are welcome to keep the DEI nomenclature of “America,” but the land of the purists of the North needs a new name. The easy solution is to change our name to the “United States of Christina” and rename the Gulf accordingly. Just as Amerigo’s first name was feminized to America, we can feminize the first name of our more genuine and likely straight Italian discoverer, Cristoforo Colombo.
I need to save my tongue from being so firmly planted in my cheek. I’m uncomfortable even joking about racist, sexist, or homophobic bigotry despite that being our societal plague at the moment. There must be a way for less disgusting messages to go viral, to flood the zone, and attract the attention of the misguided masses without soiling the honor of a charismatic messenger.
The zone: The strategy of today’s right of flooding the zone with lies and conspiracy theories is quite successful only because we enable it. The media chase every tidbit, no matter how inconsequential it eventually appears in hindsight. The best way to combat that strategy is to back away to a distance from which the zone appears quite small, nearly invisible. Then, pronouncements from the zone need be covered only occasionally when the spirit moves, and only in long-perspective summaries without what has hitherto been much jumping hither and yon around all the nonsensical outrageous statements that are only made to distract and overpopulate the territories of hither and yon wherever they happen to be. The media universe is broad and diverse (a word currently living in infamy) and when viewed from an intellectually safe distance, many alternative zones are visible.
Systemic Vaccinations: They say sunlight is the best antiseptic to counter the hidden motives behind prevarications promulgated by politicos. Rays of light filtering through cracks in the media shields surrounding nonsensical arguments can sanitize and cure. That figurative “sunlight” must take two forms. Injecting truth is not enough. The audience is smart and logical, given the chance. So, an effective strategy is to offer extrapolations of the nonsense. What would step number two look like after the ridiculous step number one is taken? What are the likely consequences of pursuing a policy that sounds good at first but would do irreparable damage downstream? Appealing to the common sense of folks inoculates them against the nonsensical negatives that go viral.
As advised in a prior post (Elephants in the room, 10 March 2025), the left’s intellectual piety just won’t cut it. Politeness and referring to the formalities of government protocols to which we ought to adhere attract little gut-level attention. Local level language delivered in a rising charismatic tone by an already familiar leader stands a better chance of breaking through. Announced topics of meetings must be what real people are worried about like healthcare, the price of necessities, and job opportunities. Such a dialogue will ultimately gravitate toward government programs and then the political realities of achieving what the people want and need.
Through the Looking-Glass – A diversion into the many “tentions”
Yes, I know it’s misspelled: But think of all the prefixes that fix the misspelling. We have already emphasized the need to capture attention. What can we do with abstention, contention, detention, distention, intention, obtention, portention, pretention, retention, and sustention? Delving just for fun into the etymology, we find roots in Latin that overlap tension too. Several of these are arcane and have more familiar versions such as abstain, contend, detain, distend, intend, obtain, portend, pretend, retain, and sustain. How many of these are relevant to our political discourse? I would say most. One implacable disappointment is the word extend that cannot be traced back to the incurable misspelling extention.
Belaboring our wordplay, abstention avoids taking a position on a thorny issue and contention is how we argue. Detention is what we do to undocumented immigrants and distention is how we stretch beyond norms. There is an intention to lead or mislead for obtention of support and votes. Portention predicts the fate of a campaign whereas pretention is the conceit of self-projection and overconfidence. Retention is keeping the office one’s in to guarantee sustention of one’s quality of political life. That was easy. No doubt any list of words that share their roots can be twisted into relevance to a topic like politics and people. Why this linguistic side trip? Because any mix of words can be shaped into a message, but its delivery into the zone where it piques interest and ensures attention is the secret sauce.
Charisma – The peak of pique
Do we know anyone who displays the personal charm, appeal, attractiveness, and magnetism needed to influence others without using logic? Likeability only goes so far. Do they also possess the underlying expertise and competence to deliver a substantive message once they have captured the requisite attention without talking over the heads of, or talking down to, their audience? (See our prior post, Expertise: Yours and mine, 9 December 2024.) Such people are elected to captain of the team, to executive chef, to chair of the book club, and yes, even to Congress. Charisma backed by competence then is a current requirement, especially on the left.
We toyed with the idea of adding the long list here of people whom Google’s AI “thinks” are or were charismatic, but we thought better of it. An obvious caveat: Like beauty, charisma is in the eye of the beholder.[1,2] “Eye” is an efficient metaphor for a variety of individual personal characteristics, preferences, experiences, and, for our purposes, political awareness and leanings. It may seem obvious, but it is worth saying it explicitly. Beyond content, it is essential to match the qualities of the presenter to the background and proclivities of the intended audience. That’s not a trivial exercise, but without it, what may seem charismatic to us may seem quite the opposite to whomever we want to reach.
There are additional ingredients in the secret sauce’s recipe, especially for the right. One is individual courage as exemplified by two former members of Congress, Adam Kinzinger and Elizabeth Cheney. Individual courage works well but there is a short-term price to pay as those two courageous individuals discovered. The alternative is relying on safety and strength in numbers. Strength, because any message is reinforced when multiple credible voices deliver it. Safety, because it is unlikely that 50 to 100 contrarian former devotees would be politically assaulted with the same narrow and intense focus, funds, and falsehoods that would be suffered by just one or a few such “traitors” to the cause.
Stare Decisis or Decisis de Novo: Solus Electiones
Latin scholars will see that I am badly bending their vocabulary, but it is already a dead language, so what more harm can I do? Beyond the courts, the question becomes, shall we stand on what “has been decided” by the politics of today, or shall we ask the people to “decide anew,” now that the consequences of their recent choices are clear? Those are the only choices. Even if the answer to that question is to forge ahead, and even if advocates with the requisite courage and charisma are found, those are necessary but not sufficient weapons in the political quiver. Performance is essential. When promised outcomes are not timely delivered, whether the attention of the yet-to-be-converted has been captured or not, a disaffected populace will follow close behind.
*Forgive the Latin liberty taken: The plural should be either "sine qua nons" or "sine quibus non."
Credits: “Rain on the ocean” and the “magnifying glass” components of the “Zones” image are from Adobe Stock images Nos. 751955222 and 875336164, resp.
Portrait of Amerigo Vespucci from Smithsonian Libraries and Archives at https://library.si.edu/image-gallery/73451.
Portrait of Christopher Columbus modified from an Alamy.com version.
[1] The full aphorism, as it appears in Margaret Wolfe Hungerford's 1878 novel, Molly Bawn, is "It is an old axiom, and well said, that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder.'" It’s been transmogrified to apply to ‘charisma’ by many including R. E. Riggio.[2]
[2] See https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201812/is-charisma-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder and the book, R. E. Riggio, The Charisma Quotient: What It Is, How to Get It, How to Use It (Dodd Mead & Co., New York 1987).
Nota Bene: Others may ruminate differently. But be warned: In my case, seeing or hearing something quite trivial -- a saying, a store clerk’s mannerisms, or bad grammar on a food product’s label – triggers a stream-of-consciousness extrapolation toward grander notions and generalizations. That is what often happens in these posts. ADDENDUM: Those subscribers who have been here for a while will have noticed that at times Ruminations has veered into diatribes. I make no apology. I just want my readers to know that it’s quite intentional. When events come close to making the ‘blood boil,’ that discontent bubbles up here.
Disclaimer: Any and all opinions expressed here are my own at the time of writing with no expectation that they will hold beyond my next review of this article. Opinions are like a river, winding hither and yon, encountering obstacles and rapids, and suffering turbulent mixing of silts from its depths and detritus from its banks. But just as a river has its clear headwaters and a fertile delta, so do opinions, notwithstanding any intervening missteps and uncertainties.
Reminder: You can visit the Cycloid Fathom Technical Publishing website at cycloid-fathom.com and the gallery at cycloid-fathom.com/gallery.
Forthcoming posts (unless life intervenes)
Monuments
…large and small – old and new
14 April 2025
Cichés
…Wisdom and warnings with a bad rap
21 April 2025
