What charisma is, and how to get it

CHARISMA is a word that's mentioned a lot when discussing political candidates. Can charisma be precisely measured? Or is something we simply know when we see it? Our Cover Story is reported now by Susan Spencer of "48 Hours":

It was an unforgettable moment of forgetting . . .

"I will tell ya, it's three agencies of government when I get there that are gone: Commerce, Education, and, ah, what's the other one there, let's see...?" said GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry.

"Oops..."

For 53 excruciating seconds in a pivotal debate, the Texas Governor lost both his train of thought, and something much more important:

"I think you can see an instant where charisma was destroyed," said professor Joseph Nye of the Harvard Kennedy School. "Perry is attractive, handsome, comes on strong, 'I'm a leader,' so forth. So I think there was a beginning of a feeling that Perry was quite charismatic. And then when he had this fumble of not being able to remember the names, that quite seriously undercut that.

"So you could almost see the building charisma which was punctured."

Nye says, though we may not like to admit it, winning personalities do win elections.

"Charisma is a sense of personal magnetism that some people have," he said. "There is an attractiveness that leads some people to be able to get others to follow them by their personality."

Mark Oppenheimer, who teaches at Yale, has studied the subject: "Most American voters ultimately don't vote on specific policy questions. They're responding to something, and it's often charisma. . . . It's whom they like."

But what exactly IS charisma?

"It's from the Greek, and it generally refers to a gift, to something freely given, something you didn't necessarily have to earn or deserve," said Oppenheimer. "But it's this talent, or unique capability that you have. It came from the gods, really."

On the campaign trail it can be simply divine.

The power of charisma - that personal connection - is why Rick Santorum glad-handed his way through all 99 Iowa counties . . . why Mitt Romney has focused like a laser on projecting naturalness and warmth.

But when it comes to genuine charisma, Republican candidates have a tough act to follow:

"I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience..."

"Reagan had this extraordinary ability to use humor to project this warmth and personality," said Nye.

In fact, in a new "Sunday Morning" poll ranking the most charismatic presidents, Reagan came in third behind Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, but first among Republicans.

With the bar that high, does a talented but bland politician have a prayer?

"We've had low-charisma presidents," said Oppenheimer. "I don't think anyone ever accused Papa Bush of being particularly charismatic. I think the younger Bush, while he was Kryptonite for some voters, he was also compelling to others. He projected a certain kind of ease with himself, a certain kind of humility. But his father, I don't think anyone found his father particularly compelling as a persona."

But charismatic or not, George H. W. Bush did win . . . which supports Oppenheimer's view that charisma - like beauty - is in the eye of the beholder.

"Look, nobody has universal charisma," said Oppenheimer. "I think Barack Obama connects with a lot of people as charismatic, but obviously there are people who loath Barack Obama. And the same thing is true of Reagan, and the same thing was true of John F. Kennedy."

It's true of non-politicians as well. Who do you consider charismatic: George Clooney? Derek Jeter? Oprah? How about the Cookie Monster?

So what about YOU? Do you think YOU have charisma? Wouldn't we all like to believe that we just radiate magnetic charm ALL the time?

Well, at MIT's Media Lab, researchers say that with a little device they actually can use science to measure your charisma . . . assuming, of course, that you have some to measure.

It's called the Sociometer, the brainchild of Professor Alex Pentland and his team at MIT. It measures NOT what you say, but how you say it.

"So the first thing is energy. You have to be energetic," said Pentland. "It shows up in your hands. It shows up in the voice, the way you sort of carry yourself and do things."

"You talk with your hands a lot. Is that a conscious -"

"If I want to be charismatic I have to be energetic," he laughed.

And, according to Spencer's Sociometer, she needs to work on it. Too bad, because high scorers have a real advantage.

Take what happened when Pentland used the Sociometer to measure charisma's impact on business decisions: "We could predict how well the business plan would be rated, without knowing anything about the business plan, without knowing anything about the person. And the two things that really mattered were, did they sound like they were excited? And, were they very consistent and fluid in how they produced this speech?"

If the world's not impressed, don't give up. Charisma can be TAUGHT! Or so says John Neffinger, an Ivy League law school grad who now runs workshops for the charisma-challenged.

Neffinger and his partners at KNP Communications define charisma as a combination of strength and warmth, beginning again with body language.

"Our older relatives probably told all of us at one point, 'Stand up straight! Smile!'" Neffinger said. "And that is actually the basic formula. Standing up straight says, 'I'm here to be taken account of. I'm here to be taken seriously. Don't mess with me,' and that projects strength. On the other hand, smiling genuinely projects a lot of warmth."

Reagan and Clinton had the most winning combination: A smile that projects both warmth AND strength.

"There are two different things going on, on the face," said Neffinger. "On the bottom half of the face is just a little bit of a smile. So you got warmth going on the bottom. That's where the warmth is coming from. But what goes on in the eyes is that there's a little bit, there's an intention to the look in the eyes. There's a determination. And that intensity connotes strength."

It's an intensity - and charisma - that President Obama's fans feel he showed in 2008, but fear he's lost in the dreary business of governing.

"One of the things that Barack Obama does that gets in his way a little bit is often when he's giving a speech or a more formal address, he'll raise his chin a little bit," said Neffinger. "And when he raises his chin, that has some authority to it. But it also distances himself from us. It makes him seem arrogant."

Neffinger's just as hard on Mitt Romney, the favorite in Tuesday's New Hampshire Republican primary: "He looks like the kind of person that a movie producer would cast as the president in a big movie, but it's not quite that easy," he said. "He tries to ham it up a little bit. He's got that big smile out there and gosh darn it, he's gonna be friendly! And it comes off as a little ingratiating which is to say he wants to be likable, but he's not necessarily actually caring about the way people are feeling. It seems fake."

Real charisma is hard to fake, and in the new "Sunday Morning" poll, 3 out of 4 voters say that indefinable something will play a role in their vote - one in four says a major role.

Not everyone finds this reassuring.

"I would not like to see in a democracy people voting simply on whether a person has a nice smile or a glad hand," said Nye.

"But in an election dominated so much by television, that seems to be a big risk," said Spencer.

"And that's one of the great dangers we have, which is, as it becomes more of a mediated phenomena what do we really have?" said Nye. "Charisma."

For more info:

• KNP Communications
• MIT Media Lab
• "Wisenheimer: A Childhood Subject to Debate" by Mark Oppenheimer (Free Press)
• "The Future of Power" by Joseph Nye (Public Affairs)