Charismatic Leaders

When Amy Klobuchar visited New Hampshire, during the Democratic primary season,  I asked her how she planned to run against a candidate of charisma with a campaign based on policy. She clearly had not been asked that question before and she smiled, thought for a moment and said, "Well, I think I have charisma, too."

She may have had some charisma, but clearly, nothing like Donald Trump. She did not become the candidate on the Democratic ticket.  Elizabeth Warren was a crowd pleaser, but she has a wispy voice  and she's a wisp of a woman, just not physically imposing. Bernie Sanders has plenty of charisma, and I thought he would stand up on stage best against Trump, but his policies scared Democrats. His policies were so extreme, he scared too many people.

Beyond Sanders, the Democrats have trouble finding leaders who can speak above a whisper. 

When 11 candidates presented themselves for consideration for the Congressional seat in the 1st district of New Hampshire, the candidate of charisma, Terrence O'Rourke, got 900 votes. He scared women. He seemed too angry for Democratic women. Chris Pappas, who barely speaks above a whisper, got 21,000. Pappas comes from the state's most populous city and his family owns a big restaurant and he has lots of friends in town, but he is a house cat. A woman who looks like she could win a spot on FOX News, Maura Sullivan, got 19,000 votes, even though she had no base of friends in New Hampshire, had only moved to the state recently, but she had tons of dark money running TV ads constantly. She had a modicum of charisma, but no policies. 

Great Charisma, Horrific Cause

When it comes to charisma, nobody beats Hitler. Crowds of women wept has they saluted him rolling by in his open Mercedes, standing up arm outstretched, brow in a stern frown. A man of strength.

The man had appeal, Heaven knows why.

George Washington had charisma. He was over six feet tall at a time most men were five feet eight. 

Had someone put a bullet in Hitler's brain somewhere around the beer hall Putsch, in 1929, would the Holocaust or World War II ever happened?

We'll never know. But I'm betting, none of those co conspirators could ever have pulled off the Third Reich without him: Himmler, Hess, Goring, Goebbels. Just to banal or too ugly. 

Now, we have Putin, that little man, who Nina Khrushchev says is a 5 foot five inch man who is trying to sell the idea he is five feet six.

He marches down long red carpets, against a back ground of golden drapes and walls, with those peculiar guards, who look not just like wooden soldiers from the time of Catherine the Great, but like wind up toy soldiers of the Nutcracker ballet. There's something weird they do with their necks and chins and heads, which is a little creepy.

What is that all about?

I'm guessing it's about projecting of not just power but past glory.

But it's all in the mind of a single man. A little man trying to be big. A little man who wants Russia to be a goliath again.

And he is a man who orders other men poisoned.  Firing squads are not his favored expedient. He likes poison. Poison is a little more worrisome. You just never know when it might get to you. 

Fiona Hill noted Putin never touched a bite or sipped a drink at the state dinner she attended, sitting next to him. Fear of poisoning?

Another favorite Russian tactic is throwing people out of windows.  Don't ask me why. I suppose it's one of those things about plausible deniability. Russians like to lie to your face with a wink, saying they know you know they are lying, but they enjoy lying while you know they are lying.

So, Mr. Putin's current project in Ukraine is a "humanitarian intervention."

Obadiah Youngblood

Senator Lindsey Graham has expostulated that someone needs to kill Putin. Put a bullet in his brain. For once, Graham has spit out the truth. But Putin, like most dictators, has taken great care to protect himself, to hunker in the bunker. 

Putin, it has been written, obsesses over the demise of Omar Ghaddafi. Apparently, he was sodomized before he was shot. That, if what we are told is true, disturbs Putin greatly. 

John F. Kennedy remarked, "Any man who is willing to trade his life for mine can kill me."

As it turned out, his killer or killers did not actually have to do that.

The men who killed Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy did not hang for their deeds.

In a day of drones and remote killing machines, one would think a leader, even Putin, could be reached.

But, apparently not. 

And so we have Ukraine.

But we also have, unexpectedly, Zelensky, that guy nobody had ever heard of in the West--like Trump, a TV creation, but in the case of Ukraine, a good creation, who actually had brass balls when the time came. 

And he had great timing and delivery.  When Putin claimed Zelensky had fled the country or was cowering in hiding, Zelensky said, "I am here. I'm not going anywhere." And he smiled that faint, economical smile and he was, in an instant a man of more charisma than either Trump or Putin, because he was a real patriot. America offered to whisk him away to safety. "I don't need a ride," Zelensky said. "I need ammunition."

A patriot needs to take a risk, to put his fortune or his life at risk in the face of palpable threat, something neither Trump nor Putin have ever done nor ever would do. That, Trump would say, is for suckers.

There is no such thing as patriotism without risk or without cost or sacrifice. The Proud Boys and FOX News staff are all about phony patriotism: tough talk, posing with guns, slogans, flags. None of that easy, safe patriotism is anything more than posing. Zelensky is at the front. 

Zelensky says, "No." That is what heroes do. 

And therein lies the difference.