Obama Doesn’t Have Charisma

He’s glamourous. Virginia Postrel, a glamour maven, explains:

Charisma is a personal quality that inspires followers to embrace the charismatic leader’s agenda (an agenda that, in the original sense of the word charisma, is seen as divinely inspired.) Glamour, by contrast, encourages the audience to project its own yearnings onto the glamorous figure. So, in this case, Sebastian Mallaby imagines that Obama will find “a way of crawling back from his embarrassing talk of reopening NAFTA.” Mallaby maintains his own views about what’s good for economic growth; he doesn’t defer to Obama’s own vision.

When voters motivated by charisma disagree with the leader they’ve backed, they support him anyway and possibly even change their minds about the right policy course. When voters motivated by glamour disagree, they become disillusioned and angry.

Let’s hope for a peak of that come around late October.