Charisma We Can Believe In

It's fascinating, because all tribe leaders have charisma, but you don't need charisma to become a leader.

Being a leader gives you charisma.

Similarly, success is often used to prove after the fact that a modern political leader has charisma. It is much harder to use charisma to predict who will be a successful leader.

So, quite understandably, qualities like magnetism and charisma suddenly come to seem really important.

If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that's where charisma comes from from the leading.

He is a fantastic ambassador for racing, his enthusiasm and charisma have been drawing fans to the sport for years.

Political scientists have tried to create charisma scales that would predict votes or presidential ratings, but they have not proven fruitful.

Throughout his pontificate, John Paul II displayed a unique moral authority and exceptional charisma, both as a spiritual leader and as a statesman.

Not only was he a great ambassador and a man of charisma and character, but he touched the lives of many in one way or another.

In short, the new style leadership, a form of managed charisma, was collectively designed to serve national needs. And it implies that Xi is unlikely to emerge as paramount leader.

And you have the charisma and the management style and the ability to get people to follow your lead, to inspire them, to motivate them to be part of your team.

Now that science s post WWII charisma has faded, politicians are taking the opposite tack. They are increasingly tempted to ignore scientific findings altogether, and make values the center of all public policy debates.

For many, the victory of normalcy over charisma should be cause for celebration. Democracy is about normal citizens electing normal men and women to lead them for a limited period according to established rules.

In practice, charisma is a vague synonym for personal magnetism. People vary in their ability to attract others, and their attraction depends partly on inherent traits, partly on learned skills, and partly on social context.

True, Yasser Arafat was not a model democrat, but his charisma and political acumen were crucial for holding all the Palestinian factions together. Now, not even Fatah, Arafat s own party, can claim to be a coherent organization.

The obvious conclusion is that the contest for UN Secretary General is about neither vision nor the best resume, language skills, administrative ability, or even personal charisma. It is a political decision, made principally by the P 5.

In the 2008 US presidential election, the press told us that Obama won because he had charisma the special power to inspire fascination and loyalty. If so, how can his re election be uncertain just four years later?

Putin s lawyers will reverse that decision the party will have cells or committees in every factory, corporation, military unit, university department, etc. Integrated by the leader s charisma and party discipline, party members will direct and unify the desolated country.

The key point here is that Europe won t be able to upgrade the job later. If the presidency goes to a politician who lacks fame and charisma, its place will forever be low down in the international pecking order.

He acknowledged in particular Mr. Vetere's dedication and commitment to the implementation of standards and norms, his diplomatic skills, his charisma and cooperative spirit, which encouraged the highest integrity and most professional behaviour among all those who crossed his path.

People sometimes say of charisma that we know it when we see it, but we are also looking in a mirror. As the economy worsened, unemployment rose, and Obama had to deal with the messy compromises of governing, the mirror became cloudier.

Indeed, reforms announced by Blair increasingly sound like empty promises, because the apparently inevitable has happened the Prime Minister has lost touch with the public. What used to be his charisma is now the permanent re enactment of the all too familiar.

In France the decreasing popularity of President Nicolas Sarkozy and of his main classical opponent, the Socialist party (still deeply divided and in search of a leader), favors the rise of the extreme left behind the energy and charisma of its young leader, Olivier Besancenot.

That was true of his relations with the public, but Johnson could be magnetic even overwhelming in personal contacts. One careful study of presidential rhetoric found that even such famous orators as Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan could not count on charisma to enact their programs.

Barack Obama, at least when he began his campaign, had all the charisma of the holy roller, turning on the crowds with the rhetorical spark of a great evangelist. That is why he barged his way past Hillary Clinton, the consummate operator of the party machine.

While his charisma and openness to dialog will be sought after, substance will also be measured and much needed. By November, after all, it will be more than a year since the global crisis began in the US, and Obama and his team must show tangible prospects for recovery.

These voters chose him a year ago not only because he was not Sarkozy, but because he incarnated the values of the true left, even if his centrist moderation seemed a bad omen. Voters of the center or even the center right are disappointed, too, by their president s lack of charisma, if not sheer incompetence.

In terms of media strategy, the contrast between the leaders of the Arab countries and bin Laden could not be starker. On the one hand, Arab kings and presidents lack charisma, seem politically impotent and are rarely, if ever, on message with respect to the big issue concerns of the peoples of the Middle East.

Political scientists have tried to create charisma scales that would predict votes or presidential ratings, but they have not proven fruitful. Among US presidents, John F. Kennedy is often described as charismatic, but obviously not for everyone, given that he failed to capture a majority of the popular vote, and his ratings varied during his presidency.

Khomeini was so self confident, and his authority was so well consolidated, that he was not afraid to make concessions if he thought it necessary for the regime s well being. Khamenei s political standing is closely associated with the current nuclear policy, and he lacks the charisma and authority necessary to move the political and religious elite toward compromise.

If Anwar were to marry his leadership and charisma to the opposition s newfound heft in the federal legislature 82 MPs, compared with 20 in the last parliament serious policy alternatives to the government s might be expected. Until now, the opposition has chiefly acted as an irritant, and voters viewed debates as entertainment, rather than as exchanges that informed policy.

It is not only the NTC s policies that could imperil the success of the Libyan uprising. Though admired in parts of eastern Libya under rebel control, Abdel Jalil is a dour figure who lacks the charisma characteristic of revolutionary leaders. Indeed, he is a provincial player who so far has been unable to communicate a compelling vision of a new Libya.

Moreover, Abe s lack of Koizumi s star quality and outsider charisma has made him rely more heavily than his predecessor on the LDP s existing leadership. These leaders are less concerned with the reform agenda than with promoting patriotism among Japanese youth, upgrading the Defense Agency to a ministry, and enacting a law to permit a referendum to revise the pacifist constitution.

It is not only the NTC s policies that could imperil the success of the Libyan uprising. Though admired in parts of eastern Libya under rebel control, Abdel Jalil is a dour figure who lacks the charisma characteristic of revolutionary leaders. Indeed, he is a provincial player who so far has been unable to communicate a compelling vision of a new Libya.

Instead, most people still instinctively look at great men as the agents of history, the men (and women) who seem to forge events through their political vision, personal charisma, and the force of their moral claims. By sheer force of conviction and personality, such figures, many of us believe, can carry the day, bringing a glimmer of hope to an otherwise detached and impersonal universe.

A word of special thanks is also due Mr. Richard Goldstone, who, by his personal commitment and charisma, contributed greatly to the recognition of the fledgling Tribunal by the international community. Dispensing justice is indeed the work of dedicated individuals. Finally, I wish to congratulate the Judges and the new Prosecutor on their appointment, election or re election to their respective terms of office. As indicated in the report, these will be taxing years for all of them.

And we have had examples over and over and over again you've just heard one in the last 15 minutes of people who have not only had that commitment, but had the charisma, the brilliance and I think in this room it's easy to use the word brilliant, my God the brilliance to succeed at least at the beginning of their quest, and who no doubt will continue to succeed, as long as more and more of us enlist ourselves in their cause.