In July, journalist Ezra Klein interviewed Atlantic staff writer Elena Plott Calabro on his popular podcast, The Ezra Klein Show. Calabro had written about Kamala Harris the year before, and Klein questioned whether the vice president was “underrated” as a potential challenger to Donald Trump. Klein said Harris reminded him of Hillary Clinton in that the two politicians “struggled with issues of authenticity, trying to be themselves while giving long speeches.” He continued that in small settings, Harris was “very warm, engaging, and profane, more so than a lot of politicians I know…. She was the kind of person you want to go to a barbecue or a party with.” Klein went on to say that there was probably no politician with “such a big gap” between “charisma on the stage” and “charisma at the dinner table.” Calabro agreed. “Once she’s in a small group and really able to be on an equal footing with the person she’s talking to and be able to look them in the eye, I think she becomes a completely different person.”
Two months later, everyone knows this person is a completely different person. Harris suddenly comes across as a politician with a natural talent for the big stage. Even in front of the largest audiences, she radiates intelligence, warmth, and an exuberant swagger that onlookers and Harris herself describes as “joy.” Good vibes are at the heart of her campaign. One of the main promises of the Harris-Waltz campaign is that the person in charge will be a normal, human, positive person, not an eccentric, angry, “freak.” Initially seen primarily as a generic alternative to Trump (“I’d vote for a cabbage,” a relative told me this summer), Harris now seems convincing in her own right. What happened? Has she been transformed in some way? Or have countless onlookers seriously misunderstood a politician who’s been in the public eye for years?
In her book Allure: How Compelling Personalities Shape Global Politics, sociologist Julia Sonnevend of the New School offers some hints at Harris’ apparent evolution. It has a lot to do with how we view politicians in the internet age. In past decades, Sonnevend writes, we looked to politicians to be larger than life. Thus, politicians exuded a messianic aura and invoked charisma, an almost godlike quality (etymologically, she points out, “charisma” means “divine gift” in Greek). But today, political life unfolds on a smaller stage. Voters encounter politicians in fragments, by scrolling through TikTok or YouTube videos. Thus, the modern version of charisma is allure, “everyday magic” based on fleeting glimpses of personality that make politicians “accessible, authentic, and relatable to those who seek power.”
When we spoke recently, Sonnebend emphasized the difference between charisma and charm. “Charisma is about distance,” she said. “Think of Churchill’s bombastic speeches or de Gaulle’s. You’re not like that guy, and that guy is obviously not like you.” When Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate and shouted, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” he looked (or tried to look) like the embodiment of history itself. Charm, by contrast, is modesty, or is meant to look like it. “It’s about proximity,” Sonnebend said. A charming politician “makes you feel like you’re really in the same space as them.”
It’s no surprise that the average politician has plenty of personal charm. But the “mediated charm” that comes through a screen doesn’t come automatically, Sonnevend writes. It has to be painstakingly created using a variety of techniques. “Re-staging” — changing the setting of a political event to a new environment where charm can shine — is “so important, especially on social media,” Sonnevend said. She sees Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister from 2017 to 2023, as a genius at restaging. For example, Ardern announced her country’s COVID vaccine rollout on Facebook Live from the backseat of a car (Ardern said the car was the best thing she could do, given her packed schedule). Last month, the Harris-Waltz campaign released a video filmed at a Detroit Jazz Cafe, in which the candidates discuss “taco recipes, chili, their childhoods, their careers, and the rights and freedoms they want to protect.” Sonnevend said videos can simply show candidates “on their way from one performance or rally to the next.” By taking us “behind the scenes of politics,” politicians can make us feel like we’re all on the same level.
In another technique, “unmasking,” leaders seem to let their guard down and briefly become normal people with real emotions. Unmasking can also happen in the middle of a formal speech. Sonneven recalled a moment early in the Ukraine war when “Biden said in Warsaw, ‘This man can’t stay in power!’” (The White House quickly clarified that Biden had not formally called for Vladimir Putin’s removal.) Masking can also appear in more fluid situations. For example, midway through her debate with Trump, Harris appeared to swallow an awkward word while calling her opponent “this … former president.” (In a previously recorded viral video that has been viewed nearly 2 million times on YouTube, she explains that her favorite swear word “starts with an ‘M’ and ends with a ‘uh’ … not an ‘ER!’” It can be tempting to watch professional politicians behaving like amateurs, saying and doing the things we would do if we were in their shoes. But unmasking requires skill. “I want them to be authentic and professional — professional and authentic — but I don’t want them to look like they’re media trained,” Sonnebend said, adding that taking off the calculated mask would come across as “embarrassing.”
To some observers, Donald Trump’s entire political career has been centered on unmasking, and it may seem as if he has cast it aside. But in her analysis of Viktor Orbán’s “illiberal charm,” Hungarian-born Sonnevend suggests that it’s a mistake to underestimate how people like Trump deploy subtle techniques to charm their audiences. Orbán’s international image as a “strongman” can overshadow his performances with domestic voters, which she writes “show a more nuanced and complex character.” Orbán takes awkward selfies with fans that make him seem lovable and vulnerable. By musing on Facebook about which toppings go best with lángoš (traditional Hungarian fried bread), he suggests he has a lot in common with everyone else. (“Garlic? Or cheese and sour cream?”) Orbán shares photos of himself taking care of his grandchildren (the “weekend shift,” as he puts it) and presents himself as an animal lover. “Hello Facebook users, I’m here again,” he wrote in 2021. “Not just on World Animal Day, animals deserve our attention. Protect them!” “These posts surprised me at first, but they fit well into his overall image of being a guardian in many different situations during uncertain times,” Sonnevend wrote.
Of course, if you don’t like Orbán, you’ll find these posts pandering, staged, and ridiculous. Similarly, Trump’s critics were not enchanted when he treated his 2019 championship-winning Clemson Tigers to a fast-food feast of McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King. Sonnevend’s book is sobering in that it asks us to acknowledge that attraction is neither innate nor consistent. Some people find Trump or Orbán genuinely attractive. Maybe they see Kamala Harris as a laughable fake. “Attractiveness is a matter of perception,” Sonnevend told me, and that taking that polarization into account might make “the election less of a surprise.” She has written about the attractiveness of Tim Walz. But “I tell myself to check the comments section,” she said. “Someone is always saying, ‘That’s just propaganda.’”
The fact that seduction is a two-way street makes it unsettling. Charm is especially effective when you want to be seduction yourself. Democrats now want to be seductioned by Harris. (“Oh my God, it brings me to tears. If you’re being seduced by good PR, who cares!” wrote one commenter responding to the Harris-Waltz video). But seduction often fails when we don’t want to see it, or when we see it and conclude that it doesn’t reflect some underlying reality. Sonnebend thinks seduction plays out on a spectrum between “seduction” and “deception.” When you’re seduction, you know you’re witnessing a performance, but you enjoy it because you think it’s telling the truth. When you see that it’s not, you conclude that you’re being deceived. That’s not a good feeling.
The fundamental problem with political charm may be that it fulfills our desire for leaders who are like us. For Sonnevend, this is an absurd claim. Who expects the denizens of the political top echelons to be normal people? And that absurdity makes charm an inherently precarious virtue. Sonnevend is not against political charm. It conveys “an underlying political message: ‘Let’s unite on issues we agree on,'” she said. “But there are risks in creating a political environment where one video or one second of charm failure can shape a candidate’s political future.” She cites Angela Merkel as an example of a leader who succeeded by conveying unattractive competence. Merkel, who promoted her earnestness, even her uncoolness, on social media, embodied “unattractive authenticity.” Sonnevend acknowledges that this may be unique to Germany, which “had a very negative experience with charisma during World War II.”
The irony, of course, is that being unattractive is actually normal. “It’s part of everyday life, part of being human,” Sonnebend says. We’ve all had moments where we just “don’t feel like ourselves.” Sonnebend told me that the key question to ask about any candidate is, “So what if she doesn’t seem like a normal person in this moment? Does that mean she wouldn’t be a good president of the United States?” Attractiveness excites us, and when it works, it seems undeniable. But unlike charisma, it’s not a gift from God. We shouldn’t put too much weight on such earthly things.