Political Scientists and journalists continually lament the demise of political principle in the information age; that personal charm has become the focus of campaigns while losing sight of the issues. The refrain continues: “politicians these days are only concerned with sound bites and photo ops.” This kind of thinking is, however, terribly short-sighted. We truly cannot and should not try to separate a politician’s charisma and character from his or her stance on the issues. The lessons of this go back to ancient times. To understand my argument, it is necessary to separate the enmity and bias we have accumulated for the leaders I cite through the benefit of hindsight and it requires that we concentrate solely on their political strategies.
Leaders like Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Sulla drew much of their power by utilizing their prowess with the media of their time (word of mouth, paintings, carvings and the like.) but these were not mere soldiers. Rather, they were warrior kings with ideas of government, however crude, and used personality, not intellectual discourse, to achieve these ends. Instead of the image of vigor, warm, and good humor we expect of modern politicians, these ancients concentrated on images of strength, cunning, and ruthlessness to keep their subjects, allies, and enemies in order. If these men had not been able to perform well in the media of their time the ancient world might have been very different and history would not remember them. Napoleon can be said to have done exactly the same thing many years later using the media of his day. (Written and oral reports of battles, paintings and newspapers.)
Still later, the German people fell in love with Hitler, though not everyone had followed the infant Nazi party or had even read Mien Kampf. He had been little more than a frustrated artist with war service as a corporal before his rise to power. It was only through his exposure and ability to perform well in the media did his power base begin to grow. Those who heard his dynamic speeches displaying his passion and martial spirit became immediate converts. We certainly cannot condone his ideas, but the point to be made here to aspiring politicians is how far personal charm and media savvy can take you.
As we have shown, a study of politics, from the ancient world to modern times will reveal myriad examples of leader’s personality taking precedence over policy. Modern students of political science writing on this subject will doubtless regard the 1960 Kennedy/ Nixon debates as being the genesis of this phenomenon. Some may pin these developments to the rise of “The Great Communicator,” Ronald Reagan, but I disagree with both of these assumptions. There are actually three earlier examples of the importance of the necessity of the ability of politicians to perform well in the media: FDR’s leadership through the Great Depression and World War Two, Winston Churchill’s media savvy in the face of Nazi Air Attacks against the British Homeland, and President Truman’s 1948 Presidential Campaign.
The Great Depression gripped the United States for over three years before Franklin Roosevelt assumed office in March of 1933. People were starving, homes and family farms were foreclosed upon and the previous administration relied on the strength of its policies to carry the day. In the election, millions of impoverished Americans looked to him for change and for hope and elected him.The plight of the nation began to turn around, not when he began issuing executive orders and pursuing relief legislation, but as he delivered his inaugural speech. Quite literally, it was in the echo of his famous quoting “The only thing we have to fear is, fear itself” that recovery began. In the moments of his before he was able to through a series of executive orders and legislation he was able to bring relief, recovery and reform to the troubled country. One cannot neglect Franklin Roosevelt’s brilliant use of his ability to perform well in the media to bring about the end of the great depression, in mobilizing the Unites States for WWII, and in leading his country through to victory in Europe. This is a fantastic example of the power of politician’s media abilities and to the chagrin of academics everywhere it occurred almost eighty years ago, well before anyone had heard of John Kennedy or the Reagan Revolution.
In his speeches during the Blitz and the Battle of Britain, Churchill didn’t bog down the British people with discourses on policy. Rather, he used personal charm and heroic spirit to rally his people into renewed vigor in defeating those who at that very moment were bombing their homes to rubble during the Blitz. Later, when the British Army was utterly defeated at Dunkirk and a hasty evacuation by sea was completed, a discussion of the events themselves or of future policy would have been like salt in the wounds of the British people. If a lesser man had taken to the airwaves then, perhaps a Neville Chamberlin or similar speaker, he might have conceded the defeat. However, Mr. Churchill took the opportunity to use the event as a rallying cry. With an Army in shambles, armed only with his skill as a speechwriter and his voice, he delivered his famous “We shall fight on the Beaches” speech, which served as a salve for the wounds of defeat and, more importantly, breathed new life into the British war effort. Can there be any finer example where the ability to perform well in the media was far more relevant and necessary than a discussion of policy?
In the Presidential Election of 1948, no one gave Harry Truman any chance at winning election to the presidency in his own right. The republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey had been so popular as a district attorney prosecuting organized crime in New York City that he easily won the governorship. In his failed 1944 bid for the White House, Dewey ran a very negative campaign but, keeping to the advice of his handlers, Dewey’s 1948 campaign was a milquetoast one. He injected almost no energy into the campaign and never spoke against Truman. He conducted himself as if he had already won and he was merely waiting for inauguration day. The fatal flaw in Dewey was his personality. Dewey was a cold fish.
Conversely and with nothing to lose, Truman fought with white-hot spirit and determination.
In his famous whistle-stop campaign, he lambasted Dewey and the Republican congress and through his speeches carried by radio across the nation, he spoke in a folksy, clear style that people could understand and identify with. He used not intellectual discourse, but his own brilliant media skills to secure the biggest upset victory in American political history.
The modern politician in a democracy is not going to achieve necessary consensus, build alliances, spar with opponents; in short, is not going to achieve anything without that most necessary asset to any politicians in a democracy: charisma. It is what you need for the electorate to put you into office and it is what you need to make deals. People have to like you if you want them to support you. People don’t vote for ideas alone. If that were the case, we could conduct the entire process by post. Names would be taken out of the process completely. One set of ideas would be on a sheet of A4 paper with a little coupon at the bottom for Candidate ‘A.’ Another paper would have a different set of ideas with a coupon for Candidate ‘B’ and so on. You could have as many candidates as there are ideologies.
The ideas you like determine which coupon you send in to the election commission and you wouldn’t find out who won until the election was over. Issues alone would determine who governs and you could end up with someone in charge with whom you cannot identify. Of course, in this example, I am having a bit of fun, but there are some academics who would agree to a similar system. However, governments do not exist merely for the propagation of policy, but to allow groups of human beings to live in concert with others. If the United States finds a way to remove personality from elections and concentrates solely on issues, we will elect a class of cold, efficient policy experts, capable of crafting brilliant legislation and treaties that lay on a table unsigned, still borne, because the scholars lack the social skills to “sell” them to either lawmakers or the public. How can differences be settled, treaties negotiated, or laws passed without the human element? Ultimately, the academics demanding a campaign sterilized into one where issues alone are the focus is absurd. People don’t want to be governed by automatons enforcing rules without feeling, without passion or compassion. The ability of politicians to perform well in the media is elemental and as we have shown in the earlier examples, absolutely essential.
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