The Rise of Charisma in the USA:Barack Obama and the Politics of Hope and Change (original) (raw)

The 2008 Presidential elections was a watershed in American politics and historic in many ways. It was one of the few times in recent history that a member of the upper house-the US Senate was assured election as the chief executive, Commander in Chief and President of the nation. It also pitted one of the oldest persons to run for the presidency, Senator John McCain, and one with some political and legislative experience with one of the youngest and someone with rather limited portfolio skills in this arena. And also at one point, in the quest for the democratic nomination for the Presidency, a female candidate had a serious chance to capture the party's nomination as Hillary Rodham Clinton and the famed and thought to be impregnable Clintonian political machinery battled fiercely with Barack Obama for this signal honor-a task for which she would ultimately fail. But clearly, the event that captured the imagination of the nation, and indeed many in the far flung reaches of the world-even those who count themselves as America's enemieswas the candidacy of Barack H Obama Jr and his almost flawless campaign to capture the American presidency-the first seriously hopeful campaign for a person of color and one who identified himself as an African-American. In this paper we attempt to interrogate and analyze a number of issues to determine how this process was successfully concluded and to do so we utilize the paradigm of Charisma and Charismatic leadership to better comprehend what transpired in contemporary American society In this endeavor we utilize the frame of Charisma and Charismatic leadership, as developed by German sociologist Max Weber, and from this we extrapolate a six step formulaic criteria and try to see 1) how close a best of fit we can replicate, and 2) if this helps us better comprehend what happened in Obama's meteoric rise to power, and what lessons can be drawn from his tenure in office. Weber's notion of charisma has been criticized by many social scientists and intellectuals, each of whom draws upon some inconsistency and then attempts to analyze it(1). It is suggested that the conception best be explained by identifying certain criteria that are characteristic of leaders or historical figures. But even then the problem of relating this to social change remains. As one writer states, "charisma is crucial to Weber's system of analysis as the basis for an explanation of social change. Weber's other types of authority are stable systems within which it is conceivable that change will take place only at a micro level. The problem for Weber was to account for large-scale social change and the concept of charisma provided what Bendix calls a "sociology of innovation' "(2) In order to ascertain the relation between charisma and social change, one has to identify the psychological and sociological components of charismatic leadership and then attempt to see what social change is implemented by the leadership. The stages of charismatic leadership throughout its development and decline can thus be traced. Such an approach to the concept of charisma is consonant with sociological concerns and underscores the concept's importance in explaining social change. For the political sociologist , especially in an advanced polity such as the USA with its separation of powers and mixed ideal typical systems of authority, the problem is compounded, for one has to pay even closer attention to the political culture and the formidable systems already in place to blunt meaningful social change.