genius” who has already stolen all the money he will ever
need. Either way, he impresses his followers because he seems to
have no mercenary motives. St. Francis and Donald Trump have only
one quality in common, but it is crucially important: neither can be
bought.

Charisma is the
politics of magic. Individuals possess it only so long as they defy
rational calculations and work miracles (the conquest of Europe is a
perennial favorite). In 1940, when most Frenchmen were ready to quit
fighting, de Gaulle appointed himself their leader and led them back
to the resurrection of France. Churchill kept the British people in
the war by convincing them that they were holding out against
impossible odds. The victories of Donald Trump are considerably less
heroic but equally astonishing, and therein lies his appeal. He
leads in the polls because noone ever expected him to lead in the
polls.

Charisma evaporates
when the magic ends, when there are no more crises or miracles, and
politics reverts to what Weber called “routinization.” Churchill
electrified the British people during the Blitz of 1940, but when he
stood for election at the close of the war, the old soaring rhetoric
no longer worked. Clement Attlee, leader of the opposition Labour
Party, had all the charisma of an insurance salesman, but he promised
the voters an efficiently administered welfare state, and they swept
him into Ten Downing Street. De Gaulle rallied the French people
when they were occupied by the Germans – but in 1968, when he had
given them a stable, affluent Fifth Republic, they rose up in revolt.
Lenin’s ruthless leather-jacketed Bolsheviks seized control of
Russia – but they ultimately morphed into Brezhnev’s paunchy
apparatchiks