Personality Politics

Barack Obama on a recent television interview was said to be choked up and evidently angry (wagging finger and solemn air noted) at a decision, or at least a possibility, that the insurer AIG was going to give out big juicy bonuses to its gluttonous fat cats who lost all our money and are seeking to steal our tax money (*duly shakes fist at evil system in which he took part*). Anyway more to the point I couldn’t help notice that it was said as part of a joke (he coughed you see) and how it made the audience laugh, and us chuckle and feel warm inside. This level of showmanship, or oratory as it is more neutrally called, is reminiscent of many such greats as Abraham Lincoln, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton. We can acknowledge the importance of personality in Politics. Some of us go as far to say inanities like Winston Churchill won us the Second World War, or Barack Obama has cured America of its institutional racism or absolved the US of all its sins (me included, I remember crowing that Gordon Brown was the savior of social-democracy). It can lead to gross errors of judgment or pseudo personality cults whose effects we fall more often then not victim to.

Firstly it seems to me that the fore-front of personality in politics has become more pronounced due to mass media development and the deepening of individualism. The entrenching of Presidentiable in French politics, the smooth managerialism of British and German politics, attest strongly to this. As does the comic but occasionally affable style of George Bush II or the soaring preachy rhetoric of Obama. Personality politics has always been around, these are just modern depictions, but the call of the hand of history, has never seemed so wide in possible repercussions.

A small example of this would be Boris Johnson. Pure persona, you think of Boris (note first name terms, like Tony or Cherie or even Dave) you think mumbling tit, rides a bicycle. At least in the past we had nicknames like the Mac, the Iron Lady or something of the sort, but they were just as bad really. Ultimately they give you a show which is within the narrative of the latest political soap opera, or personality interplay. This is of course a touch overly dramatic and selective, but the trend is undeniable. As we can see that showmans such as Mitterand, Schroeder or Clinton, were simply maintainers of the status quo, delivering little more but the same as the parties on their right. While thundering showmen such as Thatcher, Reagan, De Gaulle, and so on, use their tremendous personalities to project their mostly unsound policy agenda. A perfect example of this was one of the campaign posters of Segolene Royal during the last election which was entitled La France Presidente. Her incompetence was not made apparent until the PS decided to shun it's reasonable candidate DSK for an emotive egomaniac who ended up losing to someone of the same emotional exuberance.



This can be noted as one of the long stream of personality aggrandizement which can only further legitimize personal rule, or certainly centralize power further behind a series of masks. While it’s increased legitimacy will further chip away at the authority of the elected legislative figure, or the less media savvy of the political bunch, until all we're left with is only one democratic organ to take on the executive and a media who more often then not share the same agenda as the man or woman in charge. Robin Cook for example was a perfect candidate for Labour leadership, but most wouldn’t even consider him because he didn’t fit the persona (while it would seem his credentials and his beliefs would have more say in this). Some could argue the same for Gore, DSK, Kinnock, but the fundamental point is that it helps to have a larger than life personality or an ego the size of the tundra. Ultimately can we say that Gore, Kerry, Smith, Bayrou, Kinnock would have been better? I could place a fair wager that they would have been (this is of course only pure speculation).


Not to say that Pol Pot, Stalin or Hitler await us. Yet we can’t overlook the fact that the smooth salesmanship of political power is there solely to convince us when in fact it should be there to serve us. It is the modern equivalent of blue blood or brute force, which coerce us into accepting authority. That we can justify things which are clearly so reckless by saying that history will judge us shows to us that the current constellation of political power within our democratic systems is flawed and that we should be wary of its concentration. And it seems unlikely that Cameron, Obama, Sarkozy or even Zapatero want to change that.