Biden’s Charisma Deficit, and Why it Shouldn’t Matter (but Does).

Back when he was running for president, Joe Biden came to give a speech at my university. It wasn’t a particularly memorable appearance, but one part of it stuck in my mind. When asked by a student how he would get things done if elected, Biden said he would use the presidency as a “bully pulpit,” and went on for many minutes about how the holder of the office has a unique ability to inspire and unite Americans.

This may not sound a lot like how Joe Biden has actually conducted himself as president, but there is one thing I didn’t mention in the previous paragraph: this was when Biden was running in 1988. In the intervening thirty-five years a few things have changed. One is that our country has become so hopelessly polarized that even the most charismatic president is unlikely to appeal even slightly to people on the other side of the political divide. No matter how brilliant and enthralling the speeches, roughly half the country will still dismiss them out of hand. The second is that Joe Biden has learned, from long experience in both the legislative and executive branches, that there are other ways to get things done in Washington than via the “bully pulpit.”

I thought back to the earlier Biden after reading Pamela Paul’s terrible column in the New York Times this morning, in which she laments the prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch in 2024. Surely, she moans, we can do better than these two visibly declining old men. She first damns Biden with weak praise, allowing that he has restored norms and “been decent,” but then shifts gears 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.”

This is a wildly incomplete summary of Biden’s presidency. Whatever his stumbles and stammers, he has been, by any fair assessment, highly successful, and consequential in office. He succeeded in passing a massive infrastructure bill, and an “Inflation Reduction Act” which will reduce prescription drug prices, modernize the IRS, and allocate unprecedented sums to fight climate change. He strengthened the Western alliance in the face of Russian aggression. He resolved the debt ceiling crisis in a way that left his Republican opponents looking foolish.

Pamela Paul, like the Biden of 1988, seems to think that the main job of the president is to give incantatory speeches and display sparkling wit—to be charismatic. The Biden of the 2020’s, though, managed to achieve these remarkable results without giving a single even memorable speech. He did so by carefully building coalitions, working to bring people over to his side one by one, and generally excelling in the art of behind-doors politics, with nary a bully pulpit in sight.

I’ve been fascinated by the phenomenon of political charisma for a long time and devoted my most recent book to its history. In it, I started with the observation, drawn from Max Weber, that charisma is not simply a personal quality, but a social relationship that depends, to a very large extent, on the eye of the beholder. Whatever a person’s magnetic charm and appeal, an audience has to recognize those qualities as extraordinary for a charismatic bond to form. Recent American politics illustrates this point perfectly. Most observers on the left did not hesitate to call Barack Obama charismatic, and with reason. The man could certainly give an incantatory speech, and he enthralled sympathetic onlookers. But his magnetic appeal was entirely lost on most Republicans, who dismissed him as a phony huckster, and mocked his charismatic reputation among liberals by calling him their messiah. Donald Trump, of course, both horrified and disgusted most liberals, but appeared almost God-like to his most fervent supporters. To them, he was the very embodiment of charisma—a gift of divine grace.

Joe Biden has never really appeared charismatic to anyone. Even in 1988, his invocations of the “bully pulpit” seemed unconvincing coming from him. They came off like something he or a staff member had read in a book about Theodore Roosevelt, not something that reflected his own political experience and convictions. His actual political strengths are very different.

Unfortunately, Biden’s lack of charisma—exacerbated by his visible aging—will certainly hurt his reelection chances, as it has depressed his approval ratings throughout his time as president. As Pamela Paul’s column illustrates, American political culture continues to put great stock in charisma—in political leaders who seem to have an almost supernatural magnetism and appeal. From the “god-like” George Washington through Jackson, the Roosevelts and Kennedy down to Barack Obama, charisma impresses impressionable journalists, and it gets the vote out. And no matter how awful Trump gets, in the eyes of his base, his charisma is as powerful as ever.

But Biden’s actual achievements should count for something. And it would be nice if powerful columnists for The New York Times acknowledged this.