The Presidential Campaign Now

Are voters reliable judges of character?

This is the dirtiest and meanest Presidential campaign in my lifetime. Worse than the Willie Horton ad leveled by George W. H. Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988 where antiblack feeling was drummed up because Dukakis as governor of Massachusetts had left on parole a convict who reoffended. Just one and tube first Bush must have held his nose about what he was convinced to do. Not Lyndon Johnson unleashing the daisy petals ad and invoking nuclear war if Goldwater was elected in 1964, and a declaration by psychiatrists that Goldwatger was mentally unstable. Just  a few attacks, the petals had withdrawn after it was aired after only one time. Nor even Richard Nixon, who had associated his California campaigns with slanders on opponents being Communist tainted, presenting the checkers speech in 1952 to counter his having a slush fund, by clothing his wife in a Republican cloth coat and a refusal to give back the dog checkers that his daughters loved, himself clothed in Republican conventional respectability. This time is much worse. J. D. Vance says that it is alright to make up and repeat stories about migrants who happen to be legal but black as eating pets so as to show just how awful illegal immigration is. And a trump close supporter saying the white house would smell like curry if Kamala was elected and that Jews would be responsible if Israel was destroyed if Harris was elected, greatly exaggerating the two to three percent of Jewish American voters and American Jews in high places scrupulously and easily holding their allegiance to the United States even if having sentimental associations with Israel. When John McCain jousted with Barack Obama neither suggested the other was a threat to democracy and both current candidates charge that, one of them unfortunately true, the election an existential threat to America for the first time since 1860.

Even less combustible issues are discouraging. The Democratic Primary candidates in 2020, Harris, Sanders and Warren, were to the left of Joe Biden. Now, Harris is to the right of Biden, though not by very much, the best example of that in Harrfis wanting to raise capital income taxes by a little, less than what Biden has proposed. Trump was in favor of reversing Roe v. Wade and said so proudly but is now backpedaling because the issue is inflaming women. Not even the appearance of principle, just as his preferring a border issue rather than a border solution, as he said so overtly to Republican Senators who scuttled a border bill at his behest.This year found, this year as a whole, anti-Israel cohorts tinged with antisemitism has become prevalent and not only on campuses. The White House press corps displays some of that. A correspondent at a meeting asks whether their own beepers (which they probably don’t have as they are antiquated) asks if their cell phones will blow up. Jean Pierre, perhaps because of her discretion as press secretary does not quip as I would, “Not unless you got your instrument from Hezbellah which was a weapon of war sent  to underlings so as to communicate about planned battle action, and therefore liable to enemy intervention so as to disrupt military communications. Why were parents giving weapons of war to their children?

There is an asymmetry between the parties. Democrats don't castigate one another while Republicans say just awful things about one another. The worst Democratic candidates say is minor. Harris criticized Biden on bussing however much she misrepresented his position which was that local districts were free to allow bussing, and that is what happened when Harris was bussed as a child in Berkeley. Obama used his irony and wit to say of Hillary that she was “appealing  enough”. So Biden made up with Harris and made her Vice President and Hillary supported Obama with good conscience. Republican candidates go  for the jugular, as when George H. W. Bush as a candidate called Reagan’s economic policy “voodoo economics” and Vance said Trump was like Hitler. Those shouldn’t be passed off as words that become meaningless when the campaign is over for they lead to a cynical view that nothing politicians say can be taken seriously. Bush just allowed himself to be angry and say his words were only then once he became the Vice Presidential nominee and Vance says he learned to favor trump because of his administration as president though, obviously, being hitler is a  character trait that doesn’t go away even  if good administration follows unless he is a very bad judge of character, which is also a weighty  matter for someone running for very high office.

The columnists are all wondering under the guise of what they think the candidates should do is what they think the voters will do. What will motivate Harris or Trump to clinch the deal? What will Harris say to show is her purpose as president rather than just an alternative to Trump? Voters want more than that. But I disagree.The real question I ask is why that choice is not obvious. Whatever Harfris’s shortcomings, whether she flip flops or is not specific on policy, she is not a mean spirited insurrectionist who would sell America to the highest bidder and is afraid to confront any of America’s adversaries, he someone less likely to drop the bomb than to cave in at any treaty.

Consider the current events which make Harris a clear choice. The Biden Administration has been dealing with two major developments in the past few days and has been handling them professionally: they are providing hurricane assistance to the southeast United States and using the American military to assist Iranian missiles against Israel. American leaders are well informed and coordinating with one another and with their allies, saying very little about planks forward, which should be their posture, but as accurate as possible as the facts as they know them. That is  how a responsible government operates and by and large has operated in most Democratic and Republican administrations, sober rather than bellicose, measured rather than precipitous. And what does Trump do? He lied that Biden had not spoken to the Republican Governor of Georgia who himself said that Biden had given Georgia whatever he wanted. Trump lied about covid and recently about pets eaten in Springfield, Ohio, though that a President telling the truth to the American people is a sacred trust even if some information can be withheld. Will you trust Trump should he be elected to tell the people the truth about anything, significant, like a war, or trivial, like his crowd sizes? How can anyone take the position otherwise than that of the NY Times editorial board which is that in this case a patriot can only vote for Harris? And yet the polls remain surprisingly close, as if people disregard Trump as an insurrectionist or all the indictments against him . Why? Do people have no respect for the constitution or simple individual morality whereby we deplore liars and those who disdain the military?

And then, that night, there was the Vice Presidential debate. Vance “won” because he presented himself as more articulate than Walz, who opened with hems and haws rather than getting to the point directly, and also as a reasonable and compassionate person rather than the ogre and extremist preoccupied with punishing cat ladies by reducing the power of their votes. He did so by being mild mannered, family oriented, and engaging in the technicalities of legislation, as if people cared about such things, knowing that arguments could be made on all sides for an audience unfamiliar with the issues. So much for everybody wanting a policy debate when  clearly people prefer the personality debate that was present in the Harris Trump debate where everyone could assess the characters of the people running for President. Also, to achieve his ends, Vance just lied or obscured a number of issues as that was quickly ;pointed out by the commentators on CNN  who clearly prefer Harris. Vance said that he wanted to provide child benefits rather than defend his opposition to abortion. He also said that Trump saved Obamacare when he had in fact tried to overturn it. Vance also said that Trump had turned over power on Jan. 20th neglecting that he tried to overthrow the government on Jan 6th while also himself asking Georgia votes to give him the statue and in  cahoots with those engaged in drafting fake electors to gum  up the electoral process. Some of those actions are under indictment but trials are delayed at the behest of the president who, if he thought himself innocent, would move them quickly to clear his name. But the greatest failure of the debate was that the CBS moderator  put in  the question of Jan. 6th late in the debate rather than making it front and center because that is the central issue about whether Trump is suitable for high office rather than just one of a long set of issues worth debating. Insurrection is not just another item.

And this is happening while the United States is heavily engaged, though without ground troops, in two wars and abortion and the peaceful succession of power are mighty issues for the American people to deal with and debates just skirt around them. In the old days, when people were ideological or interest based, that is what candidates talked about: getting out of Korea or civil rights or welfare for the poor. Sometimes I prefer the old days so the media discussed the issues rather than personalities. But personality is what it is and the media do dig deeply into that rather than just the puff their supporters present. But I am unsure whether the American people are even up to judging character rather than policy. If they were, Harris would win in a landslide.

The Trump-Harris Debate

It is still a horserace.

The bottom line on the debate is that it is contentless even if consequential. Famously, in the first televised presidential debate, radio listeners thought Nixon “won”, whatever that means other than making some memorable pointed remarks lacking in  the opponent, while Kennedy was thought by the public to win maybe because of his teeth and smile while Nixon had five o'clock shadow. The debates contest appearances and so people decide they disdain Kamala’s laugh because that has become a Republican talking point. Moreover, we know alot about the candidates. Trump is mean and gruff and garbled and accept or like that for him, a strong man who voters may not have the gumption to express themselves while Kamala is a centrist left Democrat who moved more centrist this time than she was four years ago when the general rhetoric was more leftist even though Biden’s definitely New Deal leanings, pure FDR, was successful economically and overcame Covid. Saying the economy is the real issue is just a way of offering a respectable reason  for liking the Trump style. So why bother having the debate at all?

Well, the debate could provide dramatic surprises and that is what it delivered. And so the debate should satisfy as the real deal the broadcast and cablecast news organizations were hawking for a week now.Trump had to meet a low bar. All he had to do was sound coherent and a bit less mean while Harris, the old prosecutor, had to nail him on the wall to seem victorious. When I saw the debate, I decided that Harris began nervous but settled down and was fine at delivering her impassioned speech on abortion, but she failed to deny Trump’s charge that immigrants were being loosed from prisons and insane asylums, perhaps because so she would not seem to be protecting or defending undocumented aliens. In my view, the debate came down to being parallel stump speeches, each one offering their own slogans and myself amazed that Trump just goes on lying, like immigrants eating house pets. It was a largely useless exercise, I thought, that wouldn’t switch voters. People like the patter of the one they support.

But CNN  commentators thought differently, that Harris clobbered Trump, baiting him into saying stupid and racist remarks or having no answer to why he hasn’t offered a plan to replace Obamacare for the many years since Obama proposed it. The Times thought Trump was made small while Kamala went high. But if you discount his lies, Kamala doesn’t win by exposing them and, following J. D. Vance, it doesn’t matter if Haitians are eating cats, only that immigrants are disrupting American life. What still matters is comparing cheerfulness to meanness, and that is up to the voters. PBS,  the NY Times and the New Yorker mostly said the same thing. 

My take was different. Trying to expand the MAGAS would probably lose but  in a close thing. Trump was baited into saying what Harris wanted him to say, but Trump said what he wanted to say anyway: to be mean and vague and full of lies. His supporters want him to say these things even if MAGA commentators want him to dwell on issues. Why should he? He wins for his followers even if it loses the undecided, that very small figure who actually have not made up their minds about the differences. Trump has to gain more MAGAS to show up to vote, not win the undecided. In that case, he would probably lose but in a close vote. For Harris to really have a resounding victory, to win substantial numbers of MAGAS to her side, she would have required shaming him or getting him to stumble, which he did not do. He told his lies and exaggerations and did not linger on his self praise and grievances and so did not hurt himself unless people were ready to give up on him. The article yesterday in the NY Times by Peters, Healy and Robertson got it right, I think,  were close to the mark by pointing out that undecideds remained undecided which meant, to me, that uninformed people, and especially MAGAS, would vote for Trump whatever the debate results.

A debate is like a stage play and not just because it has revealing dialogue that is constrained in time and space, and in this case, as I claim, where the two sides were talking past one another. It is also dramatic because the audience makes sense of the drama, what is to be taken from the dialogue or excuse for one, out of the content and the exchanges. Playwrights improve a project by trying out audiences as to what makes an impact and will change a play so that it will resonate with real playgoers so that what happens on the strange is not elusive or obscure. They have to get it. Voters are even  less discerning playgoers. They are not schooled in political science or even standard historical references or particularly verbally astute. They just dip in late in the election year into politics and are expected to make a judgment on the candidates even though focus group members just after the debate the other night had difficulty articulating why they liked or didn‘t like one or the other candidate. The voters are amateurs with only passing interest in the subject matter and their specialized languages but they are supposed to be the wisdom of the Republic. Well, not really. People get to vote not because of their education or investment in the nation or even just because voting is an alternative to civil unrest. It is a procedure for transferring power and the Founding Fathers thought that a republic required only that a populace was virtuous, which meant that it could make obvious distinctions between right and wrong. The present election is obvious and we hope the Founding Fathers were right and the American people remain virtuous.

The Biden Withdrawal

Three incumbent Presidents in my lifetime decided not to run for another term, and they did so because they couldn't get reelected, however much Biden may be praised for doing the patriotic thing, which was also the truth.  Harry Truman said he wouldn't run in 1952 because he couldn't get a good enough deal to end the Korean War and because McCarthyite accusations against him had hurt him. Eisenhower had a clean slate. He took the available deal on Korea and bided his time to finish off McCarthy. LBJ declined to run because he could not get a negotiated settlement with North Vietnam and because Eugene McCarthy had nearly beaten LBJ in the New Hampshire Democratic Primary. Biden had to resign the nomination even though the polls with Trump remained close because he was told the polls were bad in the swing states and that the Democratic donors had dried up.

Moreover, there is plenty of time to shift to Kamala as leader. Remember that the entire British election season lasts just six weeks from the time the election is called until it is decided and Kamala will continue Biden's policies both foreign and domestic and can face Trump on the issues of abortion,and Ukraine in a lively manner, asking Trump in  a debate why Trump never criticizes Putin and that Trump is responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade. 

Another thought. Harris' vp nominee will have to be a white male so as to balance the ticket. even though the obvious choice would be someone from a battleground state, which means Wisconsin , Michigan or Pennsylvania. Gov. Evers of Wisconsin is just not mentioned as a heavy hitter. That leaves out Gov. Whitmer of Michigan and Sen. Klobuchar of Minnisota, but not Gov. Newsom of California. He is a heavy hitter but might be willing to take the job because, as the expression goes, it puts him one heartbeat away from the Presidency. LBJ made the same decision and not just to get Texas' electoral votes, though Sam Rayburn mentioned it as did JFK. The trouble with Gov. Shapiro of Pennsylvania is that it would make the Harris-Shapiro ticket too Jewish. Under Kamala, the spouse of the President would be Jewish. Harris's step-daughters refer to her as "mamala". That nearly happened once before because the wife of Michael Dukakis was Jewish and people asked her if she would put up the White House Christmas tree and she said she would. Harris's step-daughters refer to her as "mamala". So no Shapiro as vp. Sen. Mark Kelley of Arizona seems a good choice.

Biden Bounces Back

But his nomination isn’t secure.

American voters will have to engage in a bit of discernment in choosing which nominee to decide to be President in November. In the past, they could vote on relative charm or whether the economy was doing well, knowing that whomever was elected would have been a responsible President and so not a crucial choice. But not this time.

If Biden had flubbed yesterday during his post NATO Summit Meeting press conference the way he had in his debate with Trump and his interview with George Steponopolis, then Nancy Pelosi and some other senior Democrats could have had the distasteful duty of  going to the White House and telling Biden that he could no longer do the job and give way to either Kamala Harris or a short list of articulate, vigorous and well experienced Governors for the Chicago delegates to choose as standard bearer. But that is not what happened. Biden was strong in offering a comprehensive view of foreign policy. He explained the reason for and accomplishment of a strong NATO to fend off the America Firsters who had not infiltrated into the Republican Party since Pearl Harbor, pointing out that internationalism included both Ronald Rdeagan and himself. He turned a question of whether he was able to negotiate with foreign leaders into describing that he had restored talks with China and that at the moment there was nothing to talk about with Putin who is not willing to budge on his war aims against Ukraine despite the very high casualties to Russia and a loss of land in Ukraine controlled by Russia. Biden also mentioned that he had strengthened the Pacific Rim allies and so was controlling China and  economically punishing Chinese cooperation with Russia.Biden also said that managing Israel was difficult because it had the most conservative  government it had, his own involvement going back to the time of Golda Meir. Biden also managed to point out that at home  employment was up and inflation down and illegal immigration seriously lessened because of his own executive orders. Quite a good performance.

But here is where the discernment comes in. Biden’s voice is weak. He sometimes has to wait a few seconds to recover a word he is looking for, something familiar to myself during advanced age. He sometimes garbles his words or stutters. He is clearly an old man and so need to notice that his knowledge of the facts and ideas remain clear and decisive. He knows what he thinks, has thought through the issues, rather than offering canned statements. Don’t worry about  teleprompters that are used by both candidates. He is an active and acute observer of what is going on and people should notice that if they put aside his  elderly mannerisms. 

The media will over the next four months have a lot of influence in helping the voters to discern what is the differences between reality and appearance, not something required in past elections where voters could choose differences between policy, character or party affiliation. Will the media dwell on Biden’s verbal lapses or attend to the fact that he knows what he is talking about? That could make the difference. An even greater challenge to the media is how to handle Trump, whose test begins soon enough this coming Monday at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee. Commentators have already taken the role of fact checking Trump but will they do it aggressively enough tyo show he lies all the time about anything and that what he says are assertions rather than evidence or arguments, which seems a mental failure of his that goes very far back and so is not the result of aging.

The most important questions to face Trump or his spokespeople starting now is why he has never provided evidence of a rigged election, or why he hid and lied about secret documents and what right he had to ask Georgia to give him the votes needed for him to win the vote in the stage. He and they can claim Trump can’t say because these matters are in the courts, but that doesn’t wash. He is offering himself to be President of the United States not just in jeopardy of being a jailbird.  He can be asked to meet a higher standard, that of public opinion. Ask on the Sunday programs why there are no explanations of these various issues and why is he delaying the process for possibly exonerating himself? The ball is in his court and evading the issues makes him seem guilty, which is reason enough not to vote for him, as well as for his general demeanor of meanness and his plans to overthrow democracy. Commentators may be willing to discuss the 2025 Project but find it distasteful to deal with Trump’s personal character, every president, like Richard Nixon, given a clean shave for his past character once assuming President because it is so distasteful to deal with negative personal qualities. Bjut why shouldn’t they ask? Newspapermen looked into Gary Hart’s personal life and undid  him  as a candidate. Why not ask why revenge isn’t always a bad thing or that diminishing an opponent’s stature by remarking on his small hands or his wife’s appearance diminishes himself rather than the people he tries to belittle. Media people will have to wade into personalities when they try to avoid thinking verbal flubs are evidence but smearing is beneath their dignity when it is the most obvious evidence before them.

We will see next week how the media handle Trump. That could be decisive.

What Democrats Should Do

Biden should pass the torch.

The debate last Thursday was not as awful for Biden as it was perceived because the commentators dealt with Biden’s weak delivery rather than the lies offered and the revenge promised by Trump. the commentators did not deal with the essence which was that, rather than the shitshow predicted, the two contestants made clear what they believed: that the other one was the worst president ever and a liar and sending America to ruin. That clarified things and the electorate can decide which one is correct. More cynical people I know just think that they are both a disgrace, while I think that Biden, even though he has a weaker voice, was correct on the issues and his own propriety.  If Biden wins, the worst that can happen if he becomes a figurehead President, just like George W. Bush. Biden would continue his policies and points of view backed by a strong cabinet while a Trump victory is a disaster for the Constitution. People will see that out-- or so I think.

But people have acted differently and many now seen Biden as unequipped to be President because of his infirmities rather than his wise and agile management of government given the divided populace and organs of government while treating Trump’s bluster as not really meaning what he says, which is to create internment camps for millions of people, get revenge against his political enemies by politicizing the Justice Department and making most civil servants into political decisions an d to replace taxes with tariffs, which would lead  to a Great Depression. What can be done to stop Trump? An interview with George Srephanopolis is not likely to restore Biden’s support and important Democratic leaders as well as media leaders think it time to make a turn. Movement is occurring quickly as was the case when England considered  a surrender to Hitler at the time of Duunkirk and I do not exaggerate the menace a second term for Trump would be to the American Constitution.

I suggest the following plan. The leading Democrats would orchestrate a pageant at the Chicago Convention next month when, Biden having announced he will not run, three or four likely contenders, such as Harris, Klobuchar, Newsome and Whitmer, will present speeches saying that Biden has gone far but like Moses will not enter the promised land but will continue his policies in his name and then  the delegates will jostle with one another about which one will be the standard bearer. (I eliminate Buttigig because Trump will make gayness the issue, but then again, I didn’t think Obama would get elected in 2008 because he was Black. So I could be wrong and Mayor Pete has proven himself an excellent cabinet secretary, having mastered the intricacies of transportation, which are considerable.) Biden might agree with this plan to have an exit with glory, deified while still alive. When Hubert Humphrey, having been defeated by Nixon, returned to the Senate and soon found out to have terminal cancer, he received many tributes from his colleagues about his accomplishments. Rather than thinking this morbid, Humphrey said he loved it. Politicians are like opera singers. They love applause.

There would also be advantages to the nation. Remember that Lyndon Johnson got large majorities in Congress in the 1964 election because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy the previous year. That allowed Johnson to pass major civil rights legislation. A similar tribute to Biden as the person worn down from his long political endeavors might give the Democrats enough election wins that they could pass civil rights and voting rights bills as well as legislation on the border, the electorate a bit guilty at  heaving Biden out now that he was ousted. Such is the nature of popular political feeling. At least we will be rid of Trump and can hope that the Republicans can return themselves into being a conservative rather than  Populist party. That may be wishing too much, but the future can be formed through good wishes rather than dire forebodings.

Trump's Charisma

Giotto, The Road to Calvary, c.1305

Max Weber defined “charisma” as a personal quality but I prefer to regard it as the attribute of an office rather than as a personal quality because of the derivation of the term “charisma” as referring to people being invested with an aura like power by higher authority as happens when there is a laying down of hands in a church congregation or empowered by regulations in Catholic Church so that one is made a priest or a bishop. Hebrew rabbis earned their charisma by the number of their followers. In a modern secular world, political figures get their charisma through election into office, Donald Trump thinking that a President has the right to kill his political opponents, so universal is the power of the charisma of that office. That is very different from the popular version of charisma where the term refers to personal charm and attractiveness, which applies to movie stars and pop singers and may indeed be part of what leads some people, such as Ronald Reagan, to be elevated to the Presidency.

More formally put and more up to date is to define charisma as a role in that it has a body of attributes that make it recognizable as having a distinctive set of activities, such as being a bus driver or a physician or a father who is called upon to do the things that are part of those roles or to be found lacking in that role, so it can be said some people are bad parents or inept at repairing a computer glitch even if they pretend to be otherwise.  Roland Wulbert has suggested to me that a person  is charismatic if they are never contrite, just as Jesus was never contrite and Donald Trump was criticized for not being contrite even though not being so was at the heart of his being and so violated normal behavior. But he was being what he was, which was charismatic, and there are oyster attributes to be added as the qualities of charisma, including incisiveness that sees farther than ordinary people do, or confidence despite what ordinary people may think, or as Trump points out, being a stable genius, even if he is not eloquent, as Hitler was, and so may mangle or exaggerate or even lie, the truth underlying his words an expression of his charisma. 

Here are some other attributes of the role of the charismatic. Such a person has authority to declare meanings as legitimate, as when supreme court justices decide whether separate but equal is fair at the turn into the Twentieth Century and is a contradiction half a century later. Charismatics endure slander against them, as is the case with Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Trump. Charismatics draw their followers to themselves, which is the case with Luther and Lenin and Trump. Why do their followers do so? That seems the most central power and so is taken to be a magic like enchantment of the charismatic person by the followers, as if they were indeed pop stars. But the basis of charismatic following can be tawdry and unholy. Gandhi pedaled a retrogressive economic policy but adopted a garb  and a demeanor and attracted publicity that made contributions to Indian independence. Trump was an inherited real estate mogul who bankrupted his own casinos  but had an afterlife as a celebrity selling the idea of being a mogul on television who dreamed of being trich and respected, which was every Ralph Kramden’s dream, and that led him into a political venture he expected to lose and wound up the possession of a gigantic following. Barnum would be proud. Nothing very impressive is needed to get one’s credentials as a charismatic person. That is why Weber thought charisma introduced something new into the social mix but was unreliable because it was untethered. FDR had charm and he did win over the American people, but Al Smith thought there wasn’t much to be said for a cripple who would die soon, and instead persevered for thirteen years as President.

So if personal charm is not the key to being charismatic, unlike movie stars who have to fill the screens with their magnetism,.what is it that people make of Trump that gives him his hold on them? People interviewed about Trump, including both ordinary voters and people like Lindsay Graham, who seems to just admit accepting to the fact that Trump has his loyal supporters and that is reason enough to make his peace with him, is that he expresses himself crudely towards women, or with exaggeration, though not quite willing to say he lies, because Trump apparently evokes a deeper sense of what is wrong with American politics. Yes, Trump is a braggart and a loudmouth and always mean and angry but maybe people feel liberated by having someone voice feelings and ideas that they themselves would be ashamed to voice. Trump is naughty and that makes respectable people feel glad about it even if they say tsk tsk to his more outrageous claims or secretly sympathize with his racist thoughts to, for example, reinstate an Arab ban on immigration, only letting Europeans in. Trump expresses their darkest angels. That doesn’t mean he is not likable. It is that supporters either feign likeability, as with Graham (who early on despised him) or have transmuted unlikeability into its opposite, seeing the virtue of being at odds with everything in  government they find objectionable as one Trump supporter in 2016 who was against government intervention but demanded saving her Social Security, as if that weren't a government program.

 It is a good question whether Trump found an audience looking for him or whether his support was generated out of the shambles of the 2016 Republican primary battle, where no opponent seemed  to be able to deal with his demeaning jokes about his contenders. They still thought candidates should maintain some dignity and he didn’t or treated their opponents with it.

Weber thought that charismatics brought innovation into social life because that was the only alternative to custom and law as forms of social control, custom being the time immemorial way to do things, and law and bureaucracy, by which Weber meant the same thing, as having begun to prosper in the late Medieval period with the development of joint stock companies. But innovation is only a universal claim by charismatics that they are doing so. In fact, charismatics use innovation to establish retrogression. Jesus announced a new dispensation of being kind to people when, in fact, the Prophets had said the same while introducing the retrograde idea of miracles and pagan mythology. Hitler announced the innovations of technology, such as planes and cars and weaponry, but was reviving an older spirit of family values and ethnic warfare. Stalin was ushering in a new age of economic organization when he was establishing himself as the most bloodthirsty of the Czars. In general, it is incorrect to agree with “Ideology and Utopia” and think the cutting division is between past and future mindedness.

Trump is also a charismatic who pretends progress but engages in retrogression. He says he will be revolutionary by dismantling “the deep state”, suspend parts of the Constitution and creating detention centers for hundreds of thousand illegal aliens, but what he actually proposes is an old fashioned border wall, the self same restoration of Fifties family values, and punitive forms of law and order, a platform adopted from traditional Republicans so as to get their support when, pre-political, he had been open on social issues, as might be expected of most New Yorkers. Trump has joined a Know Nothing nativist party, though he may not mean he knows only Americanism but that he really doesn’t know very much about anything.

Weber misunderstood the innovativeness and potency of custom and law. Custom does not mean mores of very ancient times but only practices that seem to have ever been and forever to be even if they last only for a brief period of time. So the double standard whereby sexual chastity  was expected for only women existed for hundreds and hundreds of years or maybe for thousands but was suspended a genera tion or two back and now it seems natural for women to have sexual relations as they please. That is the new natural and an amnesia sts upon what was the natural previously. Similarly, law also seems to suspend time in that what a law does is make edicts stated in the past binding in the future. But laws can be modified. The Founding Fathers developed the Constitution as an original form of government as that was expressed in a set of intersecting fundamental laws that emphasized the balance of power and Supreme Court rulings are able to create rights and abolish them, as when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Roe v. Wade and abolished the right of abortion fifty years later. Law is flexible and those who make it and administer it are also flexible, rather than an iron rule of delegated authority responsible only to an original charismatic. Weber was being too Lutheran in thinking that the sole freedom of a person or a society was to submit, to engage in free will, to be obedient to God or some other charismatic, and that applies to custom as well, whereby people adopt and dispense with hula hoops, the moon walk, Taylor Swift and hiding under student desks so as to train for an atomic invasion.

Another cardinal characteristic of a charismatic person is not to take their words too seriously. The allegiance of the follower to the charismatic is formed by the strength of the personality of the charismatic, the follower trying to gauge the subtleties of the emotions conveyed even if not clear on the character underlying the personality. The charismatic remains an enigma, obscured from others even as followers try to grasp his meanings or being. Jesus remains enigmatic, his personality obscure, seen mostly from the outside, and his sayings enigmatic, deliberately confounding his listeners, though those who wrote down and edited his sayings were developed well enough to constitute a literature, in that people have pondered their meanings for thousands of years. Moses was charismatic even though and maybe because he stuttered and had a temper, and smote a person, as did Billy Budd. Washington was not charismatic, even though he was tall and dignified, because he stated what he said clearly and neither was Lincoln charismatic in that he was eloquent, even though both figures are retrospectively regarded as central iconic figures. Hitler’s strong suit was his emotional fervor, not the strength of his reasoning. He was fascinating rather than taken as wise.

Jesus is understood as charismatic and has been recognized as such for a very long time, whatever He was in life. Giotto painting “Jesus at Calvary”, from 1305, makes that clear by having his face turned to the viewer while the other figures are part of the mise en scene. Jesus is without expression, an icon of a figure, rather than realistic and so Giotto is bringing a Medieval representation of Jesus into Giotgto’s realistic setting. Jesus is different from other people and also silent  and expressionless while other people bustle about, whatever His other concerns might be, about heaven or His Father or the plight of mankind, speculations where Jesus’ consciousness is never plumbed. His charisma is for the ages rather than the property of the historical Jesus.

Donald Trump should therefore not be expected to offer wisdom but rather his fierce meanness, as I have suggested, which gives him his allure, and it is his followers to explain that as an attractive feature, just as why the early followers of Jesus are to find attractive an itinerant preacher who was crucified, whatever was the evolving church structure that sustained him. Maybe Trump’s hold on people will dissipate if he is convicted of multiple felonies, but maybe, then again, not. Alive or dead, he may remain appealing to a figure who garners resentments both those real and imagined. Mankind is not likely to be rid of resentment.