NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND
FORCE OF PERSONALITY
By Laurie Meunier Graves
There are many ways of being popular, and not all of them are bad. Some
people are genuinely smart, charming, blond, and slim, and the rest of us
try, with varying degrees of success, not to be too resentful. Generally,
these fortunate girls and boys start shining in junior high (or middle
school as it’s called now) and continue right through high school. Most of
us, I suspect, can still recall the faces and names of these people who
played such a prominent role in our social and emotional lives. They set the
tone of the class, they set the standards of behavior and dress, and for the
most part, everyone else followed.
As I write this, one girl in particular, from my junior high years, stands
out. Amanda, as I shall call her, had the quintessential looks that so often go
with being popular. Slim, blond, and regal, she was the queen not only of
the class but also of the entire junior high. Supremely confident, Amanda was
able to hide the fact that, in reality, she was not that smart, and she
cheated regularly when she took tests, positioning herself next to the
brightest students and copying their answers. Somehow, she never got caught.
Everyone, including the teachers, seemed to look the other way, and Amanda
sailed through junior high as an “A” student in the highest classes, when
she should have been a “B” or even a “C” student in the midlevel classes. At
the time, I couldn’t figure out how Amanda got away with her prodigious
cheating or understand what it was that put her in the center of all things
junior high. With the resignation of the perpetual underdog, I chalked it up
as another example of the gross unfairness of life.
As I approach my fiftieth birthday, I have gained the necessary distance to
put Amanda in perspective, and I must confess that I have come to appreciate
her ability to do so much with what, in fact, was so little. I have also
developed an appreciation of what her true gift was and have come to realize
that most popular people—young or old, smart or not so smart—possess this
gift. That is, force of personality, or charisma, if you will. It is a
mighty gift, quite possibly innate (but who knows?), and under the right
circumstances, with the right connections, and with enough money, it can
propel a person to an astonishingly high level.
The upcoming presidential election in November has given me ample
opportunity to reflect on the power of the force of personality, because if
ever there was a candidate to personify this trait, it is George W. Bush.
How else to explain his continued popularity despite the fact that this has
been the most incompetent administration we’ve seen in a long time? Being a
liberal Democrat, I could go on and on listing the ways he and his advisers
have misguided and mislead this country. From the environment to stem cell
research to women’s rights to the economy, this administration’s lack of
vision has been breathtaking. For example, when George Bush took office, our
country had accrued a surplus because of former President Clinton’s careful
and conscientious leadership. Now, that surplus seems like a distant memory
as the deficit grows ever larger, aided by President Bush’s misguided tax
cuts.
But nothing compares with the way he has handled the aftermath of 9/11 and
the very real problem of terrorism. President Bush turned our attention away
from the real culprits in Afghanistan and, using false information, led us
on a march of folly into Iraq, a country that, while ruled by a brutal
dictator, was not a direct threat to the United States. Once there, he and
his administration bungled the war every step of the way by not committing
enough troops and enough resources, by trusting the wrong people, and by
lacking what could be referred to as plain old common sense. It’s almost as
though President Bush had made a checklist of ways to mess up in Iraq and
then proceeded to go down the list, checking off each mistake after it was
accomplished.
As a result, terrorists, drawn by the opportunity of chaos, have flocked to
Iraq, insurgents rule a significant part of the country, and the violence grows
daily and with it the death rate. Things have gone from bad to worse, and
there seems to be no good end in sight. Yet President Bush, who persists in
falsely linking Saddam with Al Qaeda, continues to assert that everything is
going swimmingly well, not only in Iraq but also in the rest of the Middle
East, where “freedom is on the march,” and only party poopers and pessimists
think otherwise. Ignoring the news, undeterred by facts, President Bush has
constructed his own version of the truth, but as Philip Gourevitch in the
New Yorker so aptly put it, “the gap between [Bush’s] grandiose,
self-glorifying rhetoric and our anxious and unsettling reality has grown
steadily wider.”
How does he do it? How does he use his force of personality to convince so
many people? Again, Philip Gourevitch, in his “Campaign Journal” in the
New Yorker, gives us clues. Gourevitch, who is covering the presidential
campaign for the New Yorker, describes President Bush on the stump:
“[He] campaigns with the eager self-delight of a natural ham….When he says
he wants your vote, he does not just mouth the words but follows them
through with his entire body, rising to his toes, tilting toward you
yearningly….he has the concentration of an athlete in the thrall of his
game….He twists, and stoops, and spins…he makes up for whatever tightness he
lacks with an emotional appeal, seeking and generally finding a level of
connection to his supporters that eludes his rival entirely.”
In other words, President Bush is a great persuader (I believe the writer
Joyce Cary coined the term), whose force of personality, which he translates
with his whole body, allows him to appeal directly to the emotions of his
listeners. To some people, he might sound cheesy or unpolished or
disingenuous, but to many, many others, his words strike just the right
chord, familiar and comforting yet at the same time strangely stirring.
Gourevitch describes this as “an artfulness that depends on artlessness, an
eloquence that depends on inflection and emphasis.” Indeed, when I listen to
President Bush on television and watch the enthusiastic reaction of the
crowd, it almost seems as though he’s tapping into a primal Ur-language that
his audience knew before they could even speak. He appeals to the gut, and
his supporters will not be moved by reason or evidence. If their President
tells them that things are swell in Iraq, then it must be so, and the media,
with all its gloom and doom, are just plain wrong.
In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell comes to a similar
conclusion about people with charisma: “Part of what it means to have a
powerful or persuasive personality is that you can draw others into your
rhythms and dictate the terms of the interaction.” Successful salesmen have
it, good teachers have it, and many leaders, great and small, have it. They
use their charisma to dispel doubts and fears, to win people over, and to keep
them on their side, and, along with body language, the voice is employed to
maximum effect. This is how Gladwell describes an encounter with a salesman
whose abilities verge on the magical: “He had the range of an opera singer.
At times, he would sound stern. At times, he would drawl, lazily and easily.
At other times, he would chuckle as he spoke, making his words sing with
laughter.”
Compare this with what Gourevitch writes about President Bush’s voice: “[It]
has a surprising range: he can get a shouting attack going, and he can fall
suddenly quiet to create emphasis and declare his seriousness. But the most
effective quality is the harsh staccato that overcomes him when he speaks
about his wars…” As any persuasive speaker knows, the voice must be matched
to what is being sold. Sometimes it should sing, sometimes it should be
stern, and sometimes it should be downright harsh. President Bush gets this
in a way his detractors and opponents fail to understand and consistently
underestimate.
However, I can think of one great writer who definitely understood the power
of voice and charisma and their ability to sway all but the most resolute.
The writer was J. R. R. Tolkien, and the villain Saruman is perhaps one of
his best-conceived characters, a wizard with great potential who, alas,
chooses the wrong path. His strongest weapon is his voice, which he uses to
enchant, cajole, and persuade in ways that are not all the different from
his real-life counterparts. Even though The Lord of the Rings is a
fantasy, Saruman resembles tyrants such as Hitler and Mussolini, both of
whom seemed to have a supernatural hold over the men and women in their
respective countries.
Great persuaders are hard to resist, and when they are competent and
compassionate, when they possess that uncommon virtue—common sense—there is
no reason to resist them. Such people are natural leaders whose actions
match their words and their attitudes. The problem, of course, comes when
the great persuader is, as my friend Sherry Hanson puts it, “all talk,” when
the force of personality hides the fact that there’s really not much behind
the talk. Or, worse yet, when the charisma masks ill intent and can be used
to lead whole countries into barbarism and butchery.
Right now, in the presidential election, we have a great persuader who is,
at best, all talk, and is squaring off against a candidate who, for all his
strengths—his intellect, his courage, his grasp of nuance, his compassion—is
definitely not a great persuader. As such, John Kerry is facing a tremendous
uphill battle, not because of his competency as a leader but rather because
he doesn’t have the charisma that his opponent possesses. Events, both at
home and abroad, might convince enough people that George Bush is not only a
great persuader but also a great pretender who should be voted out of
office, but this is far from being a given. I think we must acknowledge the
very real possibility that George Bush will be reelected, and by the time
this essay appears in the print journal, we will all know if this is the
case. I hope I am wrong. I hope John Kerry manages to pull off one of his
eleventh-hour comebacks for which he is so famous and once again steers his
boat straight into hostile fire to prevail over the enemy.
But more importantly, I think it is time we recognize that charisma and
force of personality are formidable gifts for a politician to have. In the
future, if a Republican candidate has these qualities, then the Democrats
should choose their own nominee very carefully. Most people would agree that
John Kerry’s intellect is superior to George Bush’s, but intellect alone
will not win elections. The trick is to find a candidate who has both
intellect and charisma. It can be done. Such candidates are not as rare as
one might think, and for eight years, in the 1990s, we had a president who
possessed both virtues. However, it requires an honest, clear-eyed look at
potential candidates and a keen assessment of the opposing side. In short,
it requires awareness rather than wishful thinking.
Meanwhile, I am keeping my fingers crossed for John Kerry, and after seeing
him in the first debate, I feel heartened. He looked and sounded
presidential, and he filled me with hope. At the same time, my fascinated
gaze returns to George Bush, and I feel a little bit like a mouse quivering
before a snake that is ready to strike. Half of the country is quivering.
Come November, we will know if we are struck.
