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NY Times on "The Cult of Personality"

By Jeralyn

The Times constrasts "the cult of personality" with charisma. It's a long article. Here are the quotes I took from it:

I'll give the first round to the challenger, Barack Obama:

From the day Mr. Obama announced his candidacy, he has billed it as a movement, and himself as the agent of generational change. He has mocked his rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, for accusing him of raising “false hopes.” “We don’t need leaders who are telling us what we cannot do,” he said in New Hampshire. “We need a president who can tell us what we can do! What we can accomplish! Where we can take this country!”

Next round goes to Sean Willnetz, a Princeton Historian and friend of Hillary's, who says:

“What is troubling about the campaign is that it’s gone beyond hope and change to redemption,” said Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton (and a longtime friend of the Clintons). “It’s posing as a figure who is the one person who will redeem our politics. And what I fear is, that ends up promising more from politics than politics can deliver.”

Next round goes to Presidential Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whom I've never had the pleasure of meeting, but nonetheless, when she's on teevee, I am mesmorized by what she says. In this case, its: [More...]

When Mrs. Clinton talked about how it took Johnson as well as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to achieve the rights legislation, Ms. Goodwin said, “she was absolutely right.” Johnson’s great mastery was to get the support of Southern Republicans. “It required his understanding of absolutely every single senator,” Ms. Goodwin said. “They were a team. Without Martin Luther King agitating the country and J.F.K. picking up the bill there would not have been that pressure on the Congress, and without L.B.J. there would not have been a bill.”

Back to Obama:

Accounts of the campaign’s “Camp Obama” sessions, to train volunteers, have a revivalist flavor. Volunteers are urged to avoid talking about policy to potential voters, and instead tell of how they “came” to Mr. Obama.

The Charisma candidate brings hubris. Take, FDR:

And even for all their admiration of F.D.R., historians are quick to point out that soon after he had swept nearly every state in being elected to a second term, he tried to upend the constitutional separation of powers with a proposal to allow him to pack the Supreme Court by appointing up to six new justices (Congress wouldn’t let him). He defied the two-term tradition, and, some say, might have come to view himself as president for life.

Or, Teddy Roosevelt:

Theodore Roosevelt made a similar leap in his return appearance in the campaign of 1912, Ms. Goodwin said, when, upset with the Supreme Court’s knocking down his progressive legislation, he proposed allowing people to override judicial decisions. He ignored pleas not to run from those who said the Progressive movement had to be bigger than his personality, and ended up splitting the Republican Party.

Does Charisma translate into an ability to get one's agenda past Congress?

It remained unclear when Kennedy died whether he would have been able to get through the civil rights legislation forced through by Johnson, who inherited Kennedy’s office but never his cool.

When Mrs. Clinton talked about how it took Johnson as well as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to achieve the rights legislation, Ms. Goodwin said, “she was absolutely right.” Johnson’s great mastery was to get the support of Southern Republicans. “It required his understanding of absolutely every single senator,” Ms. Goodwin said. “They were a team. Without Martin Luther King agitating the country and J.F.K. picking up the bill there would not have been that pressure on the Congress, and without L.B.J. there would not have been a bill.”

According to Doris Kearns,

Ideally, Ms. Goodwin said, you’d have the combination of experience and charisma, “if you could mush Clinton and Obama together as one person.”

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 17, 2008 (boomark / email).