Harris is doing reasonably well, but to have better chances of winning she’ll need to summon up, learn or fake true charisma. Or even learn the power of oratory.
When you’re in the presence of a great orator, you just know. It’s an unmistakable energy that sweeps across a room — a sense that the speaker not only controls the message but owns the moment. From the calculated eloquence of Barack Obama to the folksy charm of Bill Clinton and the actorly cadence of Ronald Reagan, history shows it can win elections.
And I’m here to tell the Democrats that Kamala Harris is not yet proving she has it — and that’s it’s a pretty big reason why her lead in the polls is paper-thin and she might lose on Nov. 5 to a blustering charlatan who talks nonstop rubbish in a bizarrely compelling way. If the Democrats want to win, they need to celebrate less the fact that they’re competitive again, and teach her how to be an effective speaker.
This is not to suggest that Harris would make a bad president. I do not mean to take her down and certainly support her over Trump, who is one of the few candidates so odious on a personal level that policies can plausibly become a distant consideration.
Indeed, rhetorical skill and charisma in general have little to do with formulating sound policy — and often don’t go together (same as a journalist must be good at talking to people, analyzing situations, and writing coherently — all basically unrelated). And when they don’t, for politicians as for journalists, a special effort is needed — to learn the part that’s missing, to fake it or to overcome the absence of it.
Consider President Joe Biden, for instance. Biden is a statesman with decades of experience, but he hasn’t exactly swept the nation off its feet — and it’s not due to his dotage or childhood stutter. Hillary Clinton, too, was (despite her off-putting dynasticism) an accomplished politician with deep policy knowledge, but her speeches felt stiff, calculated, and cautious.
In contrast, Trump, with his grammar-defying, logic-bending, and often wildly offensive rants, knows how to tap into something visceral. He doesn’t win hearts and minds through reasoned argument or elevated discourse but through raw emotion and an uncanny knack for connecting with his base on a primal level. He’s inarticulate, boorish, ignorant, incurious and simplistic — and infuriating to anyone who values coherence and fact-based argument — but he has an undeniable bizarro-world charisma.
The Democrats continue to underestimate this in not ensuring their recent candidates are up to the task, on the charisma side.
That’s a big part of the reason why Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, and Joe Biden barely scraped through in 2020, because the pandemic and Trump’s behavior alienated enough swing voters (and still the outrageous Electoral College distortions made it a nailbiter). Now Harris, poised as the potential next president, faces the same challenge: she may have her qualities but struggles to crush Trump the way he deserves.
Had Bill Clinton been the candidate during last week’s debate, one can only imagine how he would have responded to Trump’s assertion that Democrats support “post-birth abortions” or that immigrants are here to eat your pets. It would not have been with stilted chin-stroking or dissertations about policy.
I imagine him saying something like: “Folks, I just wanna stop everything right there. You wanna focus on this. It’s just too much. I mean, this is like something out of a comedy about crazy politicians. The kind of person who talks this much nonsense wouldn’t be invited to Thanksgiving dinner, never mind being allowed anywhere near the nuclear button or the levers of the economy that put food on your kitchen table. I just had to say that, because the American people deserve a president who is not stark raving mad.”
It would not sound petulant, petty or even partisan — just human. That’s the charisma lowers the burden of proof and turbocharges the message. Carried along on the on wings of such charm charm, he’d have built up a 10 percent lead by now. That’s what Harris — despite the polls showing two-thirds think she “won” the debate — failed to do. And this is typical not just of the Democrats these days, but of the liberal side all over the world. Their candidates often have better policies, but they lack the charisma needed to seal the deal and emotionally dominate the conversation.
This issue is far from new. Throughout history, orators have wielded immense power, often eclipsing their actual effectiveness as policymakers.
There are countless examples of it. In ancient Rome, Cicero was considered one of the greatest orators of all time. His speeches could sway public opinion and even change the course of political events. But his talents did not always translate into sound governance or enduring influence. Many rhetoricians, from Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic to the Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, were glorified criminals. And the gold standard, of course, was set by Adolf Hitler, whose policies were catastrophic for the world, but who used his speaking ability to mesmerize and manipulate masses into following his destructive vision.
On the other hand, Winston Churchill’s speeches during World War II inspired a nation to persevere against seemingly insurmountable odds.
One of the most remarkable cases of oratory and charisma came in 1968 when presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy produced an off-the-cuff speech upon discovering that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. The very grace of it was such that it might have come from an entirely different species from the politicians of today. He even managed to quote from the ancient Greek tragedician Aeschylus without sounding highfalutin. And his heartfelt and mesmerizing words, broadcast in Indianapolis where he was campaigning, are credited with making that city one of the few major ones in the US that did not experience major rioting.
A few months later RFK was himself assassinated, and we ended up with Richard Nixon.
Similarly, more modern figures like Tony Blair in the UK or Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel have shown how powerful rhetoric (even when laced with lies) can galvanize supporters and hold a nation’s attention, often prolonging their political dominance well past the point of policy fatigue. Blair’s “New Labour” movement, anchored by his polished rhetoric, transformed British politics, while Netanyahu’s combative speeches have kept him in power in Israel, sadly enough, for ages.
Harris may very well make an excellent president. Her experience, her policy positions, and her vision for America’s future are a fairly conventional cocktail that stands in stark contrast to Trump’s recklessness. She would not try to destroy the world order that America built after World War II, and she knows elemental things that elude her opponent, like the fact that tariffs on imports are actually paid by American consumers.
But her words often feel overly scripted, lacking the natural flow and magnetic energy that draws people in. This is a problem because, in politics, perception often trumps reality. It’s not enough to have good policies; you have to sell them with passion and authenticity.
If she can’t summon natural oratory magic, she’d be well advised to figure out how to fake it. She needs a great speechwriter — someone who can craft sharp, memorable lines that will stick. She has to stop this infantile giggling at tough moments (“talk about extremist!” was the best she could do with the pets nonsense) and find well-placed zingers that cut through the noise and ring true. Because when it comes to taking on Trump, she can’t afford to let the substance be overshadowed by the spectacle.
The Democrats are running against not only Trump but the Electoral College. There is no room for error, and they certainly cannot forget the most basic of the basics: It’s the personality, stupid!
