Charisma Boys


I’ve never heard negative things about charisma. Sure, you will sometimes hear criticism about people “misusing” their charisma to push through their agendas but that’s really an objection against how a person uses (or abuses) his charisma, not against charisma itself.

With the US elections drawing near and the endless coverage of their parties’ conventions, I got to see 2 instances of charismatic people, one from each party, almost being a liability to their respective candidates!

The first guy was some senator, Marco Rubio, who was asked to speak in support of his party’s candidate, Mitt Romney. I don’t follow it yet, but I heard that Romney is like the exact opposite of charismatic. Rubio, again a guy I had never heard of (but got to see during a Jon Stewart interview), is the exact opposite. No wonder then that Stewart jokingly asked Rubio if his party bosses had told him to be careful when he went on-stage to endorse Romney. The exact phrase Stewart used was:
“Hey, Charisma Boy... take it down a notch”!

On the other side, there is Bill Clinton, the elephant in the room for Hillary, and also for Obama. The Americans love to bring out their past Presidents to talk up their party candidates. But the problem with bringing Bill Clinton on-stage is that he dazzles you. And any other star in the sky is just brushed aside by Clinton’s oratory fireworks. Clinton is a tough act to follow-up, even for Obama, who is a pretty good speaker himself.

So it’s a tough situation for American political parties: they would love to bring in the charismatic guys in their party to support their candidates, but then they run the risk of the sun blocking out the other star in the sky!

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