{"id":284,"date":"2008-02-25T17:36:20","date_gmt":"2008-02-25T22:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=284"},"modified":"2008-02-25T17:36:20","modified_gmt":"2008-02-25T22:36:20","slug":"charisma-and-the-cult-of-personality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=284","title":{"rendered":"Charisma and the Cult of Personality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week in the <em>New York Times Magazine<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/02\/17\/weekinreview\/17zernike.html?hp=&amp;pagewanted=print\">Kate Zernike analyzed &#8220;The Charisma Mandate&#8221;<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The \u201ccult of personality\u201d is used in the pejorative. But recast as a different name \u2014 call it charisma \u2014 and, as Roosevelt and other examples show, it can be a critical element of politics and its practical cousin, governance. It just can\u2019t be the only element.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday, attacks on the cult of personality seem really to mean attacks on the ability to make speeches that inspire,\u201d Mr. Caro said in an interview. \u201cBut you only have to look at crucial moments in the history of our time to see how crucial it was to have a leader who could inspire, who could rally a nation to a standard, who could infuse a country with confidence, to remind people of the justice of a cause&#8230;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By any definition, the charismatic leader emerges at a time of crisis or national yearning, and perhaps a vacuum in that nation\u2019s institutions. Mr. Schlesinger wrote in 1960 of a \u201cnew mood in politics,\u201d with people feeling \u201cthat the mood which has dominated the nation for a decade is beginning to seem thin and irrelevant.\u201d There was, he wrote, \u201ca mounting dissatisfaction with the official priorities, a deepening concern with our character and objectives as a nation.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week in the New York Times Magazine, Kate Zernike analyzed &#8220;The Charisma Mandate&#8221;: The \u201ccult of personality\u201d is used in the pejorative. But recast as a different name \u2014 call it charisma \u2014 and, as Roosevelt and other examples show, it can be a critical element of politics and its practical cousin, governance. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22,6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-2008","category-obama","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-4A","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}