Charisma

It’s a rally-the-troops gathering at the Franco-Manitoban Cultural Centre in the Saint Boniface district of Win­nipeg, and the January 2006 election is forty-eight hours away. Stephen Harper, a policy wonk with an angry, vituperative side, is surging in the polls and appearing, incredibly, to be a populist alternative. The lights dim, the canned music softens and then bleeds out. Liberal faithful are desperate for their man, their leader, to hit the button. The lights dim further, and the blood rises. All start to chant in unison: “Paul. Paul. Paul.”

The shaggy silhouettes of the local high school band, Rock Toxique, emerge on stage. Guitars are plugged in. Thud. Thud. Everyone knows the sound. The drummer bangs out a few notes, and the crowd – 500 or more – inches forward, necks craning. Canned music is one thing, but live rock ‘n’ roll reaches into the soul. The big man’s arrival is imminent. Slowly the lights rise, and there he is: from the bottom up, freshly polished loafers, pressed pants, button-down shirt, hair the same as it ever was. Ladies and gentlemen, your sexa­genarian rock star, Paul Martin. The crowd, myopic as any group in such circumstances must be, roars. Martin, smiling like no rocker ever smiles, strums his guitar. Can it be? Yes, it can. He is playing air guitar, looking for all the world like a cross between a former finance minister, a wax figure from Madame Tussauds, and a dad laying it on thick for his son’s girlfriend. The band hammers out “Takin’ Care of Business.” Thud. Everyone knows that sound too, but no one admits it.

Consent, dissent, shopping for things no one needs – a certain style of shoe, a certain dress, perfume, musk – all of this can be created out of thin air. Char­isma is another matter. It can come in many forms, but you’ve either got it or you don’t. On this night any thought that charisma cannot be manufactured was jettisoned for a higher emotional purpose, but long afterwards one could still hear the faint echoes of that last thud. A campaign rally, a potential water­shed moment, registered to all but the true believers more as “we’re up shit creek.” Martin as finance minister had gravitas: by balancing the nation’s books, he did indeed “take care of business,” and he gained some mystique for doing so. But it could not, and did not, translate onto the bigger stage.

Stéphane Dion is facing a similar dilemma, and right now if Liberal insiders knew more about the science of charisma – okay, the social science of charisma – it wouldn’t be Michael Ignatieff or Frank McKenna or even Bob Rae they’d be pining for. It would be Bill Clinton. If Avuncular Bill were leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, on campaign stops he’d be blowing hot jazz out of a cool saxophone, and Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe, and Elizabeth May would be quaking in their slickless boots. It wouldn’t matter much what Clinton said – he is a master at saying everything and nothing – women would still want to sleep with him and men would “feel his pain.”

Irvine Schiffer, author of the under-appreciated 1973 book Charisma: A Psychoanalytic Look at Mass Society, identified eight charismatic attributes, a combination of which successful leaders possess, or come close to possessing. They are: sexual mystique, playfulness (or hoax), a call from above, a fighting stance, a desirable social station, an innovative lifestyle, a touch of foreignness, and, unpredictably, a clear deficiency, often a physical imperfection.

Like most lists, it is as interesting for what it excludes. Intellectual probity is absent, as is a linebacker’s build or an Alexander Haig “I’m in control here” disposition. Instead, charisma comes from within, an intuitive, spontaneous projection that connects with regular men and women. Events like Martin’s “concert” or Stockwell Day arriving on a Jet Ski wearing a wetsuit to speak with reporters, were orchestrated playfulness, goofy failures in stage management. They were also desperate, the opposite of playful. And, as Pierre Trudeau, the charismatic gold standard in Canadian politics, said: never trust anyone who wants to lead too desperately. Trudeau might have loved being the top gun, but he hid it masterfully.

While most consider sex and politics to be like oil and water, they are actually more like chocolate cake and ice cream – made for each other. Whether Clinton’s “sins” in the Oval Office or Trudeau marrying outside his station (and age bracket) or his private peccadilloes, a leader that displays a certain sexual adventurism and recklessness goes a long way toward registering charismatically. Sex is a two-way street (or, if you are lucky, a multi-lane highway), and there are few needs more profound than the need to be desired. Clinton’s amateurish flings might not match up with Barbra Streisand’s public display of affection for Trudeau, but both men exuded sexual mojo, and Canadian women murmured “Lucky Margaret” as the prime ministerial couple were popping out young ones and “Lucky others” after they split up. Merging sexual mystique and playfulness, when a reporter asked Trudeau if he was going to give up his Mercedes, the prime minister replied, “Do you mean the girl or the car?” “The car,” the reporter said. To which Trudeau quipped, “I won’t give up either.”

Stephen Harper reading bedtime stories to comedian Rick Mercer was a clever political stroke. The moment depicted a leader who could be a prankster comfortable in his own skin. But neither Harper nor Dion would ever allude to any form of sexual indiscretion. Physically, they carry themselves as the Queen and Prince Philip of sexual politics, and emotionally they project an image of well-adjusted maturity, too adroit to engage in sexual frivolity that would endanger the ship of state. These are stolid, solid men but, one suspects, not much fun in the sack.

Jack Layton, who is known to wear leather on occasion, has a bit of the menace about him, but one senses that the national arena has made him less playful, less adventuresome. With a party platform that is essentially one-note, Gilles Duceppe has the greatest opportunity for exhibiting a little sexual recklessness, but, like Harper, his hair is always perfectly coiffed. Greens might have more fun, but Elizabeth May doesn’t really register on the sex meter. If not sex, then what of play or hoax?

Trudeau, again, set the bar high with stunts such as his famous pirouette, his slide down the banister at the Château Laurier, or his backflips into swimming pools. He could pull off gratuitous play with insouciant arrogance, and he did it on his own terms, spontaneously, but with, no doubt, studied panache (an exception to many rules, he was). But under “the charisma of hoax,” Schiffer writes, “Every great politician is to some degree an actor...?our political figures on the national and global stages are thespians of the first order.” Or at least they should be. Unlike Trudeau, today’s leaders stand outside of hoax or gleeful mucking about. They prefer the safer practice of play by association, of surrounding themselves with people or things that exude a desirable image: Harper with Mercer or in the Toronto Maple Leafs’ locker room; Martin with U2’s Bono, again and again; Layton carrying the Barenaked Ladies’ bags. Ours might be a cautious age, but what a bore! What risk aversion. No hoax, no glory. With prepared spontaneity, the payback is minimal.