Obama's radical view of democracy: government by, for, and of the people

Critiques of President Obama often say more about the individual critic than they do about the President himself. Never has this been more true than in what Virginia Postrel said in her article titled Obama's Glamour Can't Fix His Charisma Deficit. And yet, in some ways her view is instructive because I think it speaks to the root of the problem in terms of how our culture views leadership.

In 2008...not just political pundits and regular folks were expecting big things of Obama. So were certified leadership gurus. Warren Bennis of the University of Southern California and Andy Zelleke of Harvard praised Obama for possessing “that magical quality known as charisma.”

This charisma, they predicted, would give Obama “the transformational capacity to lift the malaise that is paralyzing so many Americans today” because “a charismatic leader could break through the prevailing orthodoxy that the nation is permanently divided into red and blue states ... and build a broader sense of community, with a compelling new vision.”

There was only one problem. Obama wasn’t charismatic. He was glamorous -- powerfully, persuasively, seductively so. His glamour worked as well on Bennis and Zelleke as it did on voters.

What’s the difference? Charisma moves the audience to share a leader’s vision. Glamour, on the other hand, inspires the audience to project its own desires onto the leader (or movie star or tropical resort or new car): to see in the glamorous object a symbol of escape and transformation that makes the ideal feel attainable. The meaning of glamour, in other words, lies entirely in the audience’s mind...

Glamour is a beautiful illusion -- the word “glamour” originally meant a literal magic spell -- that makes the ideal seem effortlessly attainable. Glamour hides difficulty and distractions, creating a false and enticing sense of grace. We see the dance, not the rehearsals; the beach resort, not the luggage and jet lag. There are no bills on the kitchen counter, no freckles on the pale-skinned star, no sacrifices in the promise of change.

This illusion is hard to maintain for more than an escapist moment. Even the most beautiful shoes are never as glamorous once you’ve worn them and discovered they give you blisters or, at best, didn’t transform your life. The same is true of presidents. Familiarity breeds discontent.

Postrel thinks she's critiquing President Obama with this, but its clear (at least to me) that she's really critiquing those who projected what she calls "glamour" onto him.

We are a culture that values glamour. We love to idealize those who seem better, stronger, richer, more beautiful than us. And so we place them on pedestals only to quickly see their feet of clay and moan in disappointment at their lack of perfection. That's when the cynicism creeps in and pretty soon everything we see becomes clay feet.

Remember this performance by Darian Dauchan during the 2008 campaign? It spoke to this experience in all of us (warning: if you haven't seen this one before, the language is rough).



In our fast-paced, celebrity obsessed, disenfranchised global environment, we've given up belief in ourselves and traded it for an aspirational belief in a leader who will give us a sense of security. It is a classic case of these characteristics related to an authoritarian personality.

Power and ‘Toughness’. Preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures; overemphasis upon the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness.

Destruction and Cynicism. Generalized hostility, vilification of the human.

But the truth is, Obama tried to warn us about this during the campaign. There's a reason why he talked about "we are the one's we've been waiting for," and "yes we can."

One of the most troubling questions I have about Obama is his unflinching trust in the American people to come together and have a conversation about the things that matter to us the most. I wonder if we're up to the task. In the true spirit of a community organizer, he's not so much trying to convince us of his way as he is trying to inspire us to find our way. And we're going to have to do that with each other. If we merely depend on a leader to do it for us - we'll always be subject to being led astray.

This is where President Obama's principles are truly revolutionary. He believes in a radical kind of democracy...one of government by, for, and of the people.