Personality rules our politics. We pay way more attention to individual politicians than to policies, institutions, or abstract values. While successful politics often involve much more than being an appealing personality in the media, we nonetheless require our politicians to appear authentic, relatable, in fact “one of us” on every media screen we encounter. Absurd requirement, but here we are!
Political scientists have described the past thirty years as a peak time in political personalization. We have a declining loyalty towards parties, and rather turn to people we trust. Media platforms also bombard us with instantaneous visual and textual representations of individual politicians, making us feel like we “know” these political figures “in person”. Under these conditions, the personal magnetism of leaders becomes a defining feature of their political power.
Politics is a form of theater, where successful performances fuse with the audience, attracting praise and admiration. In contrast, unsuccessful performances, where politicians fail to connect with their constituencies, are quickly deemed as “cringe”, triggering ridicule and even “canceling”. Politicians perform on the global stage, and depending on our political preferences we may look at them as heroes or boo them as villains. Much of the performance takes place in online spaces, providing us with the illusion of having “access” to the magic of politics.
There is a central paradox in our attitudes towards media and political life. While we tend to decry “the media” as fake, we nonetheless desperately look for authenticity in media representations. Politics is increasingly defined by politicians’ strange ability to appear as authentic in environments that are highly manufactured. While “in theory” we know that every media representation is constructed, faking authenticity has become a key quality successful politicians have to master. Politicians practically work as influencers: they generate loyal communities by presenting consistent online content for their own tribe and the opposing tribe. One mistake in this mediated theater could ruin a political career and one successful performance could catapult a candidate to global fame.
Under these conditions a new quality came to define politics: charm. Charm is a form of personal magnetism, a magic spell that is built on proximity, on the politician’s ability to appear as one of us. This is distinctively different from the elevated rhetorical performances we often associate with charisma (“ask not what your country can do for you”). Instead of charismatic, exceptional rhetorical performances at a distance from the audience, now politicians often have to appear as “regular voters” in authentic-appearing social media performances. They may visit waffle houses, diaper their children, or wear baseball hats to signal to their tribe: I am just like you! Of course no politician lives exactly the way the rest of us live. Especially those politicians who hold high positions have a radically different reality from regular voters. Yet, their task is to pretend the opposite.
Charm now permeates nearly every aspect of politics. Even gray bureaucrats rally behind magnetic politicians. Just consider the Democratic Party’s quick love affair with Barack Obama, who swiftly became the president of the United States, or all the charmless EU bureaucrats who line up to take selfies with Ukrainian president Zelensky. We live in a new era of politics, when exhibiting or being close to the stardust of charm strongly defines political power.
Charm has the power to bring good to the world in the best sense of seduction, but it can also take the form of deception, or even abuse, if weaponized for the wrong cause. Understanding this duality is essential when describing the role of personal magnetism in contemporary public life. On the positive side, a magnetic personality can bring politics closer to exhausted audiences worldwide. A leader with a charming personality can make us think that he indeed delivers the “change we can believe in.” When attention is scattered and media platforms are fragmented, a personality can serve as an icon, a symbolic condensation of complex policies and laws. Boring establishment parties can get a powerful image makeover through a charming and relatable personality.
But charm also has a dark side, making it a key tool of deception. We might fall in love with Prince Charming in politics, just to quickly realize how he uses his magnetic personality to attack core values and traditions. Charm can be a weapon. How can something be both endearing and militaristic? Charm offensives manage to do both. Charm offensives are public relations campaigns that weaponize the personal magnetism of the countries’ political leaders, selected negotiators, or other representatives to radically shift a country’s international image. The charm of the politician is meant to appeal to a broad international audience with the hope of improving the country’s brand. Relatable politicians can trigger rapid shifts in the perception of their countries. Charm offensives, thus, have become key tools of nation branding, often by authoritarian leaders.
I have spent the last years thinking about and researching charm. Not an easy task. Charm is elusive and shape-shifting—we, social scientists, tend to dislike that. We like measuring, defining, and writing in jargon nobody else understands. But charm escapes regular methods of academia. You cannot put charm in a definitional straight jacket, as frustrating as that might be. Yet, charm fundamentally shapes our social, political and everyday lives. We all know charming people. We have them in our families, even in our romantic relationships (who doesn’t have an ex who was charming?) They draw us in like a vacuum cleaner, magically “work the room”, making us feel we are the “one and only”. Charming people can enlighten our days, and they can even bring down walls, literally and metaphorically. But charm oscillates between seduction and deception, you never know what you are going to get. Just as seductive personalities often are abusive in domestic life, their strong presence in politics may bring the same risk. Seductive political personalities can quickly emerge on the stage, capture hearts and bring much-needed excitement and change. But they can just as well use charm to support the “dark side”, to deceive to achieve nefarious political goals. We will see both on the global stage as we observe the performance of politics. We have to equip ourselves with tools to detect and distinguish moments of seduction, and moments of deception.
Julia Sonnevend is associate professor of sociology and communications at the New School for Social Research and the author of Stories Without Borders: The Berlin Wall and the Making of a Global Iconic Event.