Portrait as Charisma in Eight Contrasts

  What is Charisma but the ability to suddenly take people where they were not expecting to be? A human relationship of trust or about power, suddenly explodes across a welter of possibles, which open up before one’s eyes. One looks then at another individual as the supreme possibility-monger: the individual that makes thing all right, different, better or at least possible. To be charismatic is therefore to allow individuals to, through one’s presence, feel that they can either re-throw their lives, or that somehow their life in the here and now is safer because one is around. A physical presence becomes a temporal guarantee for the world. In this humans are of course right. Most of the things that really change our world, are now humans. Oh of course once in a way a volcano really makes a splash and re-throws the flight patterns of Europe, but it is the exception (and has a mineral charisma of its own). The norm is that we must look to humans for our chance. They are the changes that we seek.

  But the art of being charismatic is not simple or easy. On the contrary, it lies in the power and the passion to engage individuals and take them on endless journeys, a power often given in a moment or during an occasion. One individual might be charismatic for one day, in one event or over one time, or for a certain set of individuals. Or else they might be that rarest of entities, an individual who is capable one way or other of carrying others with them, and sweeping them along this way or that. What all these charismas share is however a game of contrasts – of provoking or prolonging what one has, and as such there are many different forms and types of such charismas. For example in the recent ‘leader’s debate’, the first ever held in the media, in a British General Election, I counted at least seven distinct textures or types of charisma and their contrasts.

  The most basic game in charisma is of course to allow oneself to become something in another’s mind. To be charismatic is therefore, to demand a presence in another’s fantasies or dream or at least memory. One is therefore there for them. This being there combines two rather distinct elements. Firstly there is a physical presence. Here familiarity does indeed breed a level of contempt. For this physical presence needs a glamour, a glamour normally (but not exclusively) linked to the new. The glamour then of something else, something different, something one has not heard or expressed. But this glamour alone of course is never enough. There is a delight in a new person, whom one feels one likes, and yet that liking is nothing unless that newness allows one to open out on various possibilities and different issues. Each individual will then be judged as new, and as a personality, against a sequence of issues and what judgement they are making. The glamour of their presence is then blended across what they say, and how they say it.

  Here then all sorts of rules of engagement fall into place; the game here is that one’s voice carries the individual through one’s words, so that ideas feel possible and do-able; moreover one needs to do this for as great a group as one can. To be (as perhaps Cameron is) a charismatic Tory is not to be then generally charismatic - that is charismatic in all situations or at all times. In such cases, being a newer person will help, but only if one knows how to use it. That is, if one allows one’s very newness to allow issues to be re-thrown and examined; if one uses it to inject a level of hope or to engage with an audience. And one does that of course within the context of a developing sequence of exchanges - within a relation between individuals. One does it then in one’s ability to reach out to the protagonist that one is exchanging with - through one’s effect upon them, one’s own power is confirmed and understood. Being a passionate man of issues or merely a charismatic ‘carey-sharey’ speaker (with a knack of appearing inoffensive) is not enough. To win such a debate, one’s words need to effect the way that others in listening to them, respond to the issues. To be charismatic is to force others to appear to be listening to one’s response, and taking them on board. These others will need to appear to listen to arguments (in order not to appear rude) themselves – as such one’s opponents need then to engage with one’s words, and if those words then have a power to make them agree, then one is necessarily charismatic; that is the issues one brings up, are given in the power of one’s individuality, a new and vibrant power. - This game was of course the one that the Liberal leader Nick Clegg really scored so well at. All the more so of course, because it was very easy for him to splice his very newness with a post-expenses saga disgust with politicians. He can remain removed from the two larger parties’ (and by implication seem less corrupt) politics and sterile debate, and hover above it all as the change that people seek; a new broom incarnate.

  The second main reservoir of charisma that all not very charismatic politicians draw upon are clearly events as opposed to policies. This is always Cameron’s main asset. He is able to take an event or a single issue (immigration or National Insurance or a deep love for the NHS) and turn it into something that matters. We are endlessly invited then to empathise with his issue, his events, and so get caught up in the places that he wants to take them. I.e. the social critique which he wants to claim that they contain. And so his most carey-sharey thoughts seem to invariably produce extremely rightwing polices as their natural corollary (that he then advocates as their solution). The event takes us on a strange journey from light to dark, from empathy to fairly hard-right policies, and does so, so quickly that the move dizzies. The power then of this move is that it is very hard for Gordon Brown to counter, for what can be say? Oh he can spout policies about what he is doing to effect a different outcome, or to ensure in future that the initial event will not happen, or claim that it should never have happened. And yet this move is likely never to be enough. How can it be? How can it make good what has happened and the power and problem of this event? The result of course is, that he looks necessarily disingenuous and problematic in the face of such a welter of evidence.

  Gordon Brown’s strongest suit is of course the power of habit in our minds. We are used to him. On a day to day level this breeds a contempt – of course it does. And yet the idea of not having him there, not having his endless promises as a part in one’s life is possibly a wrench; for thirteen years he has been a part of our lives. It is very easy then (and he does this repeatedly) to claim to be an agent of what has worked well in the last thirteen years. He was the architect of this or that policy. - Here the game of course is to let the past speak for the present. That is to revive the poetry of the past, with all its passions and its pains – all of which he can claim to have addressed and have responded to. The remembered passions of the past (and their resolutions) need to become a sequence of paints to paint into the future. The past problems and the present ones, are then given the same basic solution; Gordon Brown. The power of this argument is for Brown that of his very longevity - his always being there makes it seem significant and powerful, amongst those who are not (and have not been made) to feel sick of him anyway; for it risk is of course that others allow this appeal to habit to also be a straight appeal to the past (a past that would then logically have Brown within it) and not an appeal to the future. It also begs the question as to why these problems have not been sorted out in the thirteen years in question…

  Fourthly there are clearly different powers in being old or new faces. Clegg has an advantage certainly in his newness; one needs to listen to him, and therefore one risks being caught up in a glamour of difference; that is a movement from seeing someone for the first time to a kind of hope. And yet this is of course overdone. This exists yet does not last. Whether he is capable of a deeper charisma is another and still open question. Likewise being the old face is not bad of itself, if that history is allowed to make an appeal to reaction or habit. It becomes thence a gateway to a future. It becomes then merely a matter of whether one is allowed to make that move (or whether one is capable of getting others to trust one to be the one who does make it). The game of old or new is then rather volatile; all that one can say is, that Cameron is at a disadvantage here; for he is now neither old nor new, and all he can do is querulously claim that he in the new possible leader’s face (that is, it either must be him or Brown), an appeal that is pointless in a three cornered debate, where the very context of the debate destroys then one of his main arguments.

  Fifthly and fascinatingly enough, removing a studio audience reaction (for the audience had to sit mute) changes the dynamic of charisma. Often as not appealing to a crowd, is also an appeal beyond that crowd. To hear an audience respond becomes a part of that entire experience. To remove then that part, is to make both the listening and responding become much more complex. On the face of it one needs to listen far more carefully to the arguments, and make up one’s own mind. And yet of course at this point, the kindly voices of the media and their endless reporting on what others, say enters into the picture. One will be then be invited to gauge one’s own response through the response of others of God knows what political persuasion in 140 character messages. One is then not given the simple world of cheer, clap or boo, in the textured world of the tweet and the messageboard. The game of a leader then becomes far more complex. To appeal into another mind is not something immediate or quick, not something to be gauged in the response of the audience (and so confirmed). It is rather in the responses of others, one’s friends and foes and how those responses are reported (a response about which at the time one of course knows nothing). And yet naturally there is a real bias here for the immediate. The media need to create various audiences of selected voters registering what they like or not (as in the programme, knobs replicate through the media worm ‘cheers’ or ‘boos’). The audience then that reacts first is still the one that matters, it is just that that audience is not in the room, as it is effectively conjured by the media themselves. They own it. How powerful then this communion of responding souls are, in the reaction to the debate, is then an open question. Their power is not the power to give a response in the here and now (as a normal studio audience would) but rather to echo debates or fractures of debates across subsequent days, and endless arguments. To be charismatic is then to provoke the most responses, both initially (and therefore to win the debate) but also across the subsequent days of the campaign. In effect of silencing the studio audience is to allow the result of the contest to be worked out across time and not (as often as not) by the genuine audience but by the tweet-doctors and spin-masters that appear to carry the media’s reporting of the debate forward. Or to put it otherwise, a debate can only be judged on the reactions of others, and that reaction then produces its own effect in the minds of yet others. To remove then the initial audience from the event, is to open up what that debate is, and how it is viewed to a thousand other voices, all whom become the competing audience that matters (the ones that shape our minds) for this debate; a truly interesting social experiment.

  Sixthly, there is always the game in any such debate, of managing the domain of expectation and reality. Individuals carry then their expectations into a debate. That is, they carry the history of what they say, and even more importantly what they say that they say. Cameron’s main appeal then was to be charismatic and engaged with other folk - this was his brand. A brand that in the normal run of things is impossible to query; any more than the statement ‘I know myself to be funny on the inside’ can be countered. Being charismatic was then a part of Cameron’s political identity. And yet in any debate such charisma always has to be earned anew, a task that is made all the more difficult if one has posed around and upped expectations before hand. I.e. if one has made endless appeals to the power of one’s humanity, and allowed that myth to grow in the minds of others, one is very likely to come unstuck in a debate. The myth will always be so much greater than the reality on the ground, and so blast that carefully fostered ‘charismatic myth’ apart; - as one’s actual presence is not enough to make the difference in the face of other’s opinions and arguments. Cameron is therefore a man who won one campaign (the Tory leadership election) on an appeal to Charisma (he was behind David Davies at the time, but then wowed the conference with a speech without notes), and has lived off it ever since. His trouble is that to be charismatic at a Tory Party Conference, is to not to have universal appeal, and the ‘brand’ which he has sold has its limitations.

  Finally there is that charisma that is so hard to predict. It is one that reaches into the minds of campaign workers, and allows them in their day to day affairs and exchanges to make arguments for sceptical audiences. It therefore works in lending itself to others, and through others. It lends them issues and images to use in their own campaigns, and their own local issues. This Charisma is always a complex construction of media spin but also genuine presence in both the arguments that matter but also in an individual. This is the kind of democratic charisma, that we know once manufactured (Blair had it in 1997 and Thatcher in the late 1980’s), is impossible to beat in a campaign as long as it lasts. The problem is then whether such debates as these will allow this charisma so lacking in the campaign to materialize again? Or will they actually prevent (or delimit) it happening, or make sure that it happens at different times and with different leaders? And if so what kind of world, what kind of democracy does will it form?