The word charisma is ubiquitous today. Marketers use it to sell everything from shampoo to perfume to olive oil. But it arrived relatively recently into common usage. Back in the Fifties, my father, then a journalist at Fortune magazine in New York, used it in a profile of the labour leader John L. Lewis. His editor sent a draft back to him with the word circled, and the comment: “What the hell does this mean?”

My father had taken the word from the great German social theorist Max Weber, who, in the early 20th century, adapted it to describe a form of disruptive authority based on an intense, emotional connection between leaders and followers (its original, much older meaning was theological: a gift of divine grace). For decades afterwards, charisma remained a technical concept in the social sciences. But in the Fifties, writers such as my father found it useful in analysing an American political scene increasingly dominated by television and other mass media. John F. Kennedy seemed to embody the quality better than anyone, and ever since his election in 1960, journalists have routinely counted charisma as a key component of presidential politics.

In their usage, charisma is a purely personal quality: you either have it, or you don’t. Weber, however, offered a more subtle and persuasive interpretation. As he pointed out, it is not enough for leaders to have unusual talents and a magnetic personality. The followers need to perceive them as doing so. Charisma, in other words, lies at least partly in the eye of the beholder. In extreme cases, such as in totalitarian societies, charisma can effectively be manufactured. Thanks to pervasive, unrelenting propaganda that presented the secretive mass murderer Joseph Stalin as a heroic superman, a large proportion of the Soviet population saw him as intensely charismatic. Many North Koreans today probably feel the same about Kim Jong Un.

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Recent American history also illustrates Weber’s point. Most American liberals saw Barack Obama as intensely charismatic. He exuded energy and hope, and was a brilliant, incantatory speaker. But his magnetic appeal was entirely lost on most Republicans, who dismissed him as a phoney huckster, and mocked his reputation among liberals by calling him their messiah. Donald Trump, by contrast, both horrified and disgusted most liberals, but has appeared as a quintessential American hero to his supporters, and almost God-like to the most fervent of them. To the Republican base, he remains the very embodiment of charisma.

Still, in free societies without Stalinist-level propaganda, charisma can’t simply be manufactured, and personal qualities remain crucial. Kennedy wouldn’t have been perceived as charismatic without his youthful vigour, his easy, sexy manner, his brilliant smile, and his ability to give an enthralling speech. Obama has genuinely extraordinary oratorical powers. And Trump, whatever one thinks of him, is an enormously talented entertainer, and has an uncanny ability to sense and express his supporters’ most visceral feelings. He has a neural connection to the Republican id.

Charisma hasn’t always been this partisan. In fact, as I argued in a recent book, it has often played an important, positive, unifying role in democratic societies. Charismatic leaders have inspired trust even among their political opponents, thereby helping to bring fractured nations together. By the power of their oratory, they have broken through political logjams and brought about needed action. They have put warm flesh on the bones of abstract constitutional principle. At the start of the democratic age, figures such as George Washington in the United States, Toussaint Louverture in Haiti and Simón Bolívar in South American all exemplified these uses of charisma, even if the fervour they inspired in their followers also tempted the last two towards dictatorship. In the United States, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Kennedy, while each the target of fierce criticism, also exerted a charismatic appeal that went well beyond their own political camp, as illustrated by the nation-wide outbursts of grief that followed their deaths.

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But for charisma to have these positive, unifying effects, ordinary people need to at least be open to the possibility of seeing figures from the other camp as charismatic. The record of the Obama and Trump presidencies suggest that America is now far too divided for this recognition to take place. And as a result, charisma has lost much of its positive role in the United States. No matter how brilliant the personal qualities, they only work on followers already ideologically disposed towards the candidate in question.

The rise of virulently partisan radio and television, of social media, and of internet algorithms have all exacerbated the problem enormously. Thanks to my own browsing history, literally every time I open a new tab, Microsoft shows me a news story about the awfulness of Trump. A conservative cousin gets the same horror stories, but about Joe Biden. The same forces make it all the easier for ordinary people across the world to feel a charismatic bond with populist politicians like Trump, or Narendra Modi, or Viktor Orbán, who appeal directly to the emotions. By contrast, technocrats like Emmanuel Macron, who last week sternly scolded French families for not raising their children with sufficient “authority”, are all the easier to mock as elite and out of touch.

All this brings us to the current presidential campaign, and the figures of Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis. Biden, whatever one thinks of him, has been a significant president with some important achievements to his name. He succeeded in passing a massive infrastructure bill and an “Inflation Reduction Act” which will allocate unprecedented sums to fight climate change. He strengthened the Western alliance in the face of Russian aggression and cannily resolved the debt ceiling crisis. During his administration, unemployment has hit a 50-year low, and inflation is returning to normal levels after the pandemic.

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But Biden gets very little credit for these achievements, even from people who voted for him. Barely 40% of the American population approves of his record as president, while more than 54% disapprove. To be sure, conservative Republicans loathe him, seeing him as corrupt and disruptive. But their opposition alone cannot explain these dire numbers. A better clue comes from a recent column by Pamela Paul of The New York Times, who lamented the prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch in 2024. Surely, she moaned, we can do better than these two visibly declining old men. She first damned Biden with weak praise, allowing that he has restored norms and “been decent”, but then went on to damn him, full stop: “That old age is showing. Never an incantatory speaker or a sparkling wit, Biden seems to have altogether thrown in the oratorical towel.” In other words, she ignored Biden’s actual record as president, and focused on his charisma, or rather his lack of it.

Lack it he does. On video, Joe Biden unquestionably cuts a poor figure. He looks his age. He moves haltingly. His speech stumbles, stammers and wanders. It is all too easy to portray him as senile. Yet the same conservative critics who call him a senile puppet will often, in the very next breath, denounce him as a criminal mastermind. Both can’t be true, and in fact Biden’s record as president very much belies the charges of senility. As president, he has made no memorable speeches, to say nothing of incantatory ones. Instead, he has effectively applied skills he perfected in his long career in the Senate: glad-handing, making deals and crafting coalitions behind the scenes. But in the eyes of journalists like Paul, these skills, and what Biden accomplished with them, matter less than his glaring lack of charisma.

On the other side of the political abyss, DeSantis’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination illustrates equally well the way Americans continue to over-emphasise charisma. Nine months ago, after winning re-election as governor of Florida by nearly 20%, DeSantis looked poised to replace Trump as the Republican Party’s darling. He was “Trump without the chaos”, “Trump without the baggage”, “Trump without the nonsense”. At 44, he had vigour, obvious intelligence and a record of challenging and provoking liberals at every turn. In February, a conservative columnist anointed him the Republican Kennedy. Whatever one thought of his actual policies (I, for one, thought him a menace), he seemed an obvious frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

Unfortunately, he also turned out to be “Trump without the charisma”. As the campaign began, it became painfully obvious that he lacked Trump’s easy rapport with crowds, his neural connection to them. In public, indeed, DeSantis appears incapable of relaxing. His voice vibrates with tension. He has no visible sense of humour. Charisma, as Weber emphasised, requires the ability to establish an emotional connection with followers, and DeSantis seems, at crucial moments, either to shrink away from them, or to laugh maniacally in an awkward attempt to bond. It should not be surprising, then, that DeSantis currently lags Trump by more than 30% in most polls, and just this week has cut more than a third of his campaign staff. Barring an unexpected turn of events, he might well end up withdrawing from the race before a single primary vote is cast.

Is it possible, in our current moment, to imagine a figure whose charismatic appeal might help unite the country instead of further dividing it? It is not implausible that our political divisions will get even worse, leading to government paralysis, violence, and a crisis severe enough to shake Americans out of their ideological certainties. In that case, they might well flock to a charismatic figure promising to restore unity. But would that figure respect democratic, constitutional norms? The historical record is not encouraging. In one of the most prominent cases, the bitter partisan divisions of the French Revolution opened the door for Napoleon Bonaparte, who ruled as a dictator while sacrificing millions to his wars.

But meanwhile, in the short term, the most likely upshot of America’s continuing obsession with charisma is that it will help Donald Trump back into power 15 months from now. That alone is an excellent argument for not putting too much emphasis on it.

One of the most interesting twists in the term’s recent history is not its misuse, however, but the fact that it has finally fallen out of favour. Until very recently, in most democratic countries, ‘charisma’ was thought to be one of the most – if not the absolute most – important quality for any leader to have. John Major was derided for not having it. Bill Clinton was admired for his. Tony Blair possessed it in droves, while the same was rarely said of Iain Duncan Smith. Winners and losers were pretty much determined based on their ‘charisma’.

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Even as this state of affairs proceeded, there were clear problems with it. The first was that charisma is largely in the eye of the beholder. Plenty of people attested to John Major’s, on meeting him. Others claimed that the former French President, François Hollande – often mocked for his lack of allure – had the fabled quality in spades.

Another problem is that ‘charisma’ can be faked. Or at least created. Once somebody holds any form of power they immediately become slightly more interesting and important. Once they start walking into rooms surrounded by retinues of bag-carriers and security officers, the illusion is almost complete. If you are the centre of attention in most rooms you are in, you are almost inevitably going to be described as having some form of charisma.

Oldfield describes charisma as something that mattered because it was seen as a unifying force. Which is perhaps why Barack Obama was so frequently described as charismatic. Not just because he was an excellent public speaker, but because he genuinely did seem – for a time at least – to have the power to bring people together, and unify them around some ideals, even if only the most broad and ill-defined.

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But then came Donald Trump, who appears to have helped kill off – among much else – this obsession with charisma. By any ordinary analysis, Trump must count as one of the most successful figures in American history. A man who made a fortune, lost it, made it again, became a household name and then won the Presidency on the first occasion he ran for it.

Normally, this sort of achievement that would cause people to wheel out all sorts of hyperbole – including the magical charismatic virtue. But no discussion of Trump has ever mentioned the term. Perhaps that’s because many people have no desire to be caught praising the man. Or perhaps his divisiveness means he couldn’t possibly possess the crucial uniting quality that ‘charisma’ demands. For whatever reason, Trump didn’t warrant the charismatic epithet – neither in terms of lacking it or exuding it. And, in turn, no one is seeking the virtue in the Democrats who are hoping to run against him.

It is in Britain, though, that we can see the real reason why the charisma obsession has taken a break. Tony Blair take a bow. Just look at the current leader of the Labour Party. There are few people who met Corbyn in his wilderness years who observed any charismatic qualities.

And that is the point. Momentum, among other Labour Party movements, have recently been strongly pushing their line that their party’s real enemy was always Tony Blair – and that the man who led them to three successive general election victories is precisely the sort of figure of whom the party now has no need.

People on both the Right and the Left who dislike Blair can, and do, make the argument that the problem of the Blair years is that the country was suckered by an unusually charismatic figure who then led everyone (Left and Right) in the wrong direction. If charisma can lead to the catastrophe of Blairism, then perhaps it makes anything possible; in future, it’ll be best to remain suspicious of anything which may lead to a repeat.

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This suggests that the side-lining of charisma is caused not by a misunderstanding of a term, but simply by disillusionment with the quality as we had come to view it. Disillusionment caused by over-promises and the missteps of ‘charismatic’ people, and a growing scepticism among the voting publics of people alleged to have such magical qualities.

And so the key qualities politicians must be seen to possess have shifted accordingly. In the race to lead the Conservative party, nobody has felt impelled to make claims about the vast charisma emanating daily from Jeremy Hunt. There have been few attempts to pretend that when Matt Hancock enters a room, nobody can take their eyes off him. Of those who might end up leading the party, Michael Gove is majoring on the fact that he has been a smart and successful minister who mastered a range of portfolios. Sajid Javid is running in part because his backstory would demonstrate a ‘diverse’ candidate for the Tory party. Rory Stewart is running on the fact that he is quirky and strange. On it goes.

Even in the case of the front-runner, Boris Johnson, the argument for his appeal is not that he is ‘charismatic’ per se but that he is simply the biggest beast in the jungle, and that the biggest beast at some point ought to be allowed to run the jungle. His campaign launch rested on his seriousness and appeal, without reference to any magic qualities. His appearances before potential voters so far in this race have actually focused on his apparent meekness and mildness, as though he were trying to slip through without people making any special claims about him.

So perhaps it is over – this quest for a much-vaunted if hard-to-define quality. If so then it should not be much lamented. It was always too imprecise a quality to take on the load it ended up bearing. But its absence does leaves us with a serious follow-on challenge: what qualities do we actually want in our politicians? We thought we wanted charisma. It turns out we want something else. But what? Perhaps it’s an entirely new breed of politician.

Charisma is one of those slippery concepts – we know it when we see it, or more accurately when we feel it. But should we trust it? Some argue, and research indicates, that it may be something to be wary of – as it hides a lack of substance, capability and character. Boris Johnson is widely acknowledged as charismatic, but for many it is in this flashy, shallow sense.

I think we should definitely seek charisma in our leaders, but an older, deeper conception of it. The word charisma comes from the Greek for the gift of grace or favour. Truly charismatic leaders give off a sense of having received something beyond themselves and an ability to communicate and share this across difference. Whether it’s grace, power or purpose, true charisma isn’t just an appealing individual with whom we’d like to have a beer.

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The original moment of ‘charismatic leadership’ offers a good model. Last week churches were celebrating Pentecost. This festival commemorates one of the stranger events in the generally quite strange New Testament. Following Jesus’s death and resurrection, a small group of his friends meet in a house, bewildered and exhausted, and “receive the Holy spirit”. An indoor tornado appears and small fires break out on their heads. They are then able to start speaking in the myriad languages of the nations gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of the harvest, and people start joining them. They receive a gift which propels them into leadership, with exponentially increasing numbers of followers.

Pentecost was the “ground zero” of the church. This divinely conferred ability to communicate across groups, to inspire, envision and incorporate people from every language, tribe and social class was part of the reason the early Christians were able to transform the face of the known world so rapidly. All Christians trace their lineage to it, but it is particularly associated with the wing of the church called Pentecostal or Charismatic, most of whom still “speak in tongues” and encourage powerful ecstatic experiences of the divine.

Whether you take this as a powerful story or gospel truth, it has something to teach us today about charisma. It isn’t about Hollywood gloss, or sex-appeal, or extraversion. It can’t be manufactured.

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It’s first about communication, and the ability to connect with people not like yourself. Every person who showed up to see what all the kerfuffle was about was able to hear a message about God intervening in history in their mother tongue. They were spoken to in the language of their dreams and longings, not just the language of the empire or the elite. They felt known, seen, understood. Boris Johnson has this with some audiences who connect with him viscerally, but the opposite effect on many others.

But it can’t just be about one person. It’s noticeable that the whole group received the Holy Spirit and were able to communicate and connect in miraculous ways. Although there were famous apostles (John, Paul, George and Ringo) charismatic leadership in the early church was collective. Diverse audiences didn’t just hear a message, they were invited into a community, a story.

This model of leadership is the opposite of a narcissistic personality cult. There was a saviour involved, but it wasn’t any of the leaders, any single human individual. The big risk for the current crop of leadership contenders is attempting to invite people to follow them without offering an idea of what they can become part of.

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Finally, true charisma is not just showy and surface – it also has content. The ‘charis’ of the apostles was indivisible from ‘kerygma’, proclamation. They had something to say, a vision for a new world and insight into the human destiny, and it wasn’t primarily about themselves.

Even the most authentic charisma won’t appeal to everyone. In one of the surprisingly common moments of dry humour in the bible, we are told that some in the crowd said “they have had too much wine”. Power, purpose, connection and inspirational leadership can easily set off our cynicism sensors, largely because false charisma so often disappoints.

But charisma will only go so far. Competence matters too. A few short chapters after the church’s charismatic revolution, the burgeoning institution faces its first crisis and has to rush to appoint (effectively) operations directors. Connection, vision and belonging are not alone enough – organisational skills and planning are also needed if the original promise is not just to cause more disappointment, more cynicism. Truly charismatic leaders build a team, think ahead, and seek to serve the people who follow them, not the other way around. When we see that kind of charisma, I’ll be ready to follow the leader.