CT Blue

A while back I attended a Zoom seminar hosted by my Alma Mater. The guest presenter was David A. Bell, a professor from Princeton, who was there to talk about his new book Men on Horseback, The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution. It is a study of the role charismatic leaders played in the Revolutionary age that accompanied the Enlightenment. I bought the book, and have just finished it. The introductory chapter explores the nature of charisma, and among other things considers the way in which the manner in which a charismatic leader presents him or herself to the public fluctuates as the nature of media changes. Printing, newspapers, and writing techniques that flowed from the invention of the novel had a profound impact on the way in which leaders were able to form a relationship with the public.

People of my generation immediately think of John Kennedy when we hear the word charisma. Quite likely he could have been considered a charismatic leader today, but the fact is that he lived in an almost entirely different media world. The news media, particularly television news, played things pretty straight. There were no propaganda outlets, as there are today. For the most part, the networks did not chase ratings so far as the news was concerned. That came much later. Also, of course, there was no internet, no Facebook, and no twitter. The connection Kennedy made may have been partly the result of a sort of star quality, but the media’s relation to him was not much different than its relation to other politicians of notoriety. Kennedy, charismatic or not, would have been unable to stray outside the norms that Bell’s charismatic leaders had a habit of successfully disregarding. Bell’s book deals with charismatic leaders in the Age of Revolution. He writes primarily about Washington, Bonaparte, Simon Bolivar, and Touissaint Louverture.

Which brings us to the former guy, to whom Bell often alludes, but never expressly mentions. He never met a norm he didn’t disrupt.

It was lost on most of us, but one can’t deny that he was a charismatic leader as far as the brainwashed were concerned. I think an argument can be made that his charisma stemmed from the fact that he was primarily an entertainer. The media loved him, because he was good for ratings and provided plenty of pundit fodder. The non-Foxers couldn’t stop talking about him in 2016 at the same time they were insisting he was a joke. Even the Fox folks took their time about coming on board so far as taking him seriously. Meantime, every word he spoke and every speech he made was broadcast to an adoring multitude who he entertained more than he did anything else. They never cared, and still don’t care, whether he lied to them or delivered on any of his manifold and contradictory promises. The internet played a role as well, obviously, as every nonsensical tweet he emitted was devoured by his fans and the media. The good thing about twitter, from a grifter’s point of view, is that you don’t really have to be factual, you can just make it up and entertain.

His grift wouldn’t have worked in another media age. In the newspaper only ages, he would have sunk like a rock, assuming anyone took notice of him in the first place. His speeches, which really amounted to free form stream of consciousness rants, would not have translated well to the printed media. Even in the early television age, he would have gotten nowhere, as he would not have gotten the billion or so worth of free air time he got from the cable networks and the pundits desperate for ratings.

Now, you might say, rants worked for Hitler in an earlier media age. But Hitler was a much smarter politician than the former guy. In his case, the rants were necessary, but not sufficient. He knew how to appeal to people’s grievances and bigotry, just like the former guy, but he also knew how to organize a movement and how to maintain himself in power. A Hitler would have understood that he should deal effectively with a pandemic even as he blamed it on the Jews. The genius did nothing but blame it on the Chinese, or the Democrats, or the scientists, but, as we know, did nothing effective to stop it. He was too stupid to understand that it was his ticket to reelection, had he simply stepped up and done the right thing. The USA lucked out this time, as the dictator wannabe was just too stupid and incompetent to pull it off.

One of the only bright spots (we must always look on the bright side) in our political firmament is the fact that there are no Republicans out there, likely to pick up where the former guy left off. None of them are able to entertain the cretins like the genius could. Ted, Josh, Lindsey, none of them have it. This post at the Palmer Report says it well, discussing the troubles in which Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis now find themselves:

There’s a reason Gaetz and DeSantis can’t make the Trump playbook work for them: they’re complete idiots. Donald Trump was a one dimensional villain, but he had a sort of brute force cunning that allowed him to survive for decades, if never stay ahead. Gaetz and DeSantis don’t even have that. It would be like me thinking that reading the Dan Marino playbook will make me able to throw a touchdown. Even with the playbook in hand, you’ve got to have the skill to pull it off. And these clowns don’t.

If there’s a competent politician out there who can use the playbook and throw the touchdowns, we’re doomed.

Afterword: It is perhaps worth mentioning that while all of the Men on Horseback started out as committed republicans (emphasize the small “r”), they all, with the exception of Washington, became dictators, claiming that the acclamation of their followers was sufficient to legitimize their seizure of power. If that sounds familiar, then we can take solace from the fact that each one of them (again, other than Washington) ended his life in prison or in some form of exile. Mar-a-Lago is not exactly an uncomfortable place of exile, but there’s still a reasonable chance that the genius will share Louverture’s fate and die in prison.