this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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One of the biggest things that the president, and really anyone in a high or noteworthy level of office can wield, is the bully pulpit. Their ability to speak to people and basically be guaranteed that people will listen to what they're saying, even if they get clip-chimped by fox news or the nyt or cnn or whatever. "Inspiration" is something that can drive people to the polls, too. Having a candidate that the majority of the population trusts and can believe in, i.e. is inspiring, is better than having a candidate that isn't those things, broadly. Well, if you agree with their goals, anyways.
What you're describing is 'charisma' and I agree- hard to get any group of humans to listen to you if you literally have none at all. But 'some' should be plenty for anyone that cares about being an active participant in a democracy.
There's the rub. Sociopaths have as much if not more charisma than decent, sincere people and the people that need to be 'inspired' by charismatic leaders are as easily led to do good or evil, and work for or against their own interests.
The US was founded on 'checks and balances' specifically designed to prevent people that get too 'inspired' by a charismatic leader from recreating the autocracy we fought a revolution to free ourselves from. The whole point of the US constitution is that even unchecked democracy can quickly devolve into mob rule which quickly leads right back to autocracy.
People that need to be led are sheep. They'll follow a shepherd, or a wolf that looks vaguely like a shepherd, and never know the difference until it's too late. The US constitution relies on the voting citizen to explicitly resist being 'led', and themselves lead by selection of representatives.
The fact that so many people's beef with the only bulwark to impending fascism is essentially "The president should be better at leading sheep" to me indicates this democratic experiment is ultimately going to fail. We probably should have put some kind of educational or personal stake requirement into voting but the 'white land owner' requirement and racist poll taxes set a backwards precedent for that that I can't see a way out of it for the US. Hopefully someone will figure out how to create sustainable democratic institutions at some point in the future but I won't live to see it.
EDIT: You inspired me to meme! https://lemmy.world/post/15807707