The Charisma-vs.-Charm Election
Charisma is not generally associated with a true leader, in my opinion. It is more associated with the opposite: the corporate politician, who is what is the matter with our country. There are too many of this type in our corner offices.
Robert C. Townsend • Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits (J-B Warren Bennis Series)
Politics Happens Through the Eyes
By Morry Kolman
One of the odd quirks of symbolism that Roland Barthes gives attention to in his book Mythologies is election photography—the pictures that are taken and shared of the people that want to represent us. Writing about the political posters he was seeing around France at the time, he reflected on the f... See more
By Morry Kolman
One of the odd quirks of symbolism that Roland Barthes gives attention to in his book Mythologies is election photography—the pictures that are taken and shared of the people that want to represent us. Writing about the political posters he was seeing around France at the time, he reflected on the f... See more
Jasmine Sun • Macrodoses #5: The Election
Our society has replaced heroes with celebrities, the quest for a well-informed character with the search for flat abs, substance and depth with image and personality. In the political process, the makeup man is more important than the speech writer, and we approach the voting booth, not on the basis of a well-developed philosophy of what the state
... See moreJ.P. Moreland • Love Your God With All Your Mind
I am a committed advocate of political rhetoric that is direct and clear. It should be interactive, not one-sided. It should speak to the common sense of common people—with a moral component, but without being inflammatory, preachy, or divisive. In a perfect world, political language would favor those with enough respect for people to tell them the
... See moreFrank Luntz • Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear
kind of playbook for aspiring autocrats: appeal to people’s emotions, not their intellects; use “stereotyped formulas,” repeated over and over again; continuously assail opponents and label them with distinctive phrases or slogans that will elicit visceral reactions from the audience.