Charisma is not gendered. Aimee Semple McPherson had it. Oprah Winfrey has it. Gretchen Whitmer, Elizabeth Warren, Jennifer Granholm (born in Canada, alas, so not eligible), and Katie Porter would all have defeated Donald Trump. A hologram of Ann Richards would have won. Samantha Bee? Trump came from the world of entertainment, so why not? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a polarizing figure, to be sure—but would she have done worse than Kamala Harris? No, she would have done better.
Of course, finding a charismatic candidate is one function of primaries. In 2016, Hillary Clinton cleared the primary field of all but some little-known candidates who dropped out early—like Martin O’Malley, Lincoln Chafee, Jim Webb—and one candidate, Bernie Sanders, who seemed minor, being so far to the left of most Americans, but ended up with 13 million primary votes to her 17 million. In the end, it did not serve the party well that it tried to coronate her, thwarting a competitive primary process. And this year, the party made the unprecedented move of nominating a candidate who had never won a single primary. In a series of primaries, would Kamala Harris have prevailed? Given her performance in 2020, one has to imagine that the answer is no.
Historian Molly Worthen, author of a forthcoming book on charisma, argues that charisma can, in fact, be understood, and that it has little to do with eloquence. Not all charismatic leaders are good public speakers, and they don’t have to be slick. Rather, “charisma resides in the story they tell,” according to Worthen. “All charismatic leaders have an instinct for the right balance of skepticism and desire to believe. They have a sense for how the stories of the status quo are no longer working for some subset of people and what new narrative might be more satisfying. Whether we’re talking about Andrew Jackson, Marcus Garvey, the Guru Maharaj Ji, or Donald Trump, they all saw how the current stories about the world were failing people and what story would be more persuasive.”
Eisenhower was no great public speaker, but he had a story: “I saved the free world.” Trump had a story. What was Kamala Harris’s story, other than “Be afraid”? Candidates need to do better—and political parties need primaries to help them do better. They need charisma. Not in place of ideas, and not as a cover to hurt people—like when Bill Clinton signed a free-trade agreement that shredded the livelihoods of so many American workers. But as a way to get a hearing, with the hope that the story they tell is one that deserves to be brought to life.