Legal Commentary

In raising the term "cult of personality," The New York Times article does a bit of a bait and switch: it dutifully cites to Max Weber and his concept of charisma (not quite the same thing). But it does not mention the implicit associations of Stalinism tied to "cult of personality". After all, people don't normally use "cult of personality" as a compliment. When I have said that a cult of personality grew up around George W. Bush after 9-11 (which has since largely dissipated), I was implying that there's something disturbingly authoritarian about his Administration: that people became so fixated on loyalty to the President in time of crisis that they weren't paying sufficient attention to the civil liberties implications of the Administration's policies.

In fact, the term "cult of personality" has become a full-fledged cliche in American politics. Despite my own past usage of the term, I fear that it no longer does much explanatory work. Nowadays anytime a politician demonstrates (1) charisma; (2) fervent loyalty from supporters; (3) slavish media attention; (4) religious rhetoric; or (5) more attention and less media criticism than his opponents would like, people associate him or her with a "cult" of personality. I've said it about George W. Bush (I'm not the only one); others have said it about Hillary Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and now Barack Obama.

If the term is to make any sense at all, it may be useful to separate out two different concerns. The first is the fear that charismatic leaders who inspire patriotic fervor and strongly emotional bonds of loyalty will produce authoritarian policies that people overlook because of their emotional connection to the leader and his claims to represent the national interest. That is the Stalinist implication of the term "cult of personality." And that is what people hint at when they use the term pejoratively. If so, then the real question to ask when the term is deployed is whether the speaker is claiming that politician's policies are or are likely to become authoritarian. Of course, people generally recoil from using the "A" word, but that's what's at stake. When I have used the term "cult of personality" in reference to George W. Bush, I have been invoking these concerns about his policies. Is *that* what people are worried about in the case of Barack Obama? If so, then they should say so directly.

However, there is a second concern that may actually be more important given the current features of American politics: the cult of personality around our leaders refers to the increasing disconnect between the politics of leadership (the methods of gaining and retaining power) and the actual mechanisms of governance.

Democracies tend to rally around charismatic figures; media culture organized around television tends to promote this because it makes character and appeals to character particularly important. People gain office through displays of charisma and appeals to character, seeking the right to rule by acclimation of the public. Yet once the leader takes office, the actual governance of the country is in the hands of large bureaucratic institutions like administrative agencies, the military, the intelligence services, and so on. When the new President takes office on a tide of acclimation and optimism, he inevitably promises what someone else will be delivering.

This is a distinct problem from Caesarism and creeping authoritarianism. The problem is that people are distracted from the way governance actually occurs because it is easier for them (and the press) to focus on personalities of leaders. To say that contemporary politicians form cults of personality means to say that they distract the public from the mechanisms of governance because that is how they gain the authority to rule. The problem is that if this authority does not translate into the ability to move the system forward, it is delusory and will, in time, breed cynicism and despair and successive waves of charistmatic politics each promising much but delivering little.

The long term fear about such a situation is that eventually electoral politics will become a sideshow to the actual forces that govern the nation, or, in the alternative, that popular discontent will grow so great that eventually a charismatic and unscrupulous leader will attempt to seize actual control of the methods of governance and rule by decree, thus ending democracy. This concern is not about any particular politician, but rather about the sustainability of popular sovereignty and the long term health of democratic republics. The framers of the American Constitution were worried that democracies eventually collapse and turn into dictatorships; that is why they tried to design a republican system of government that would make it difficult for power to be concentrated in the hands of any one person. (Their vision of the Presidency, it is worth noting, was very different from today's conception.) This larger question-- the long term sustainability of republican government in the face of changing circumstances and tendencies toward charismatic politics-- is probably not much on the minds of pundits and commentators who go on about "cults of personality," but it is probably more important than the question of whether either Obama's or Clinton's supporters are too loyal for the commentator's taste.