August 15, 2023

There was a time when the personal aura, the credibility, the machismo of the individual we elected president mattered. Collectively, these traits can be thought of as gravitas, a sense of commanding leadership, the quality that wordlessly demands the respect of everyone in the room when they enter. The great jazz trumpet player Miles Davis was often described as having “duende” — equally strong measures of charm and magnetism, impossible to ignore, at once attractive and intimidating. Duende is a close cousin of gravitas.

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Both words describe effective leadership, whether it be in business, the military or in high-level politics. Leaders who evidence these characteristics can persuade and cajole some of their opponents over to their side not only by the strength and logic of their positions, but also — even more importantly — by the very real sense on the part of their supposed adversaries that they wish to be seen in a favorable light by that leader and seek to curry their favor.

Sadly, those days appear to be gone, perhaps for good. It’s difficult to envision today’s Democrats accepting the comforting remarks of Republican President Reagan after the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster or even Republicans today rallying around Democratic president JFK like they did during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Instead, everything is hyperpoliticized. In perfect candor, this is mostly the fault of Democrats, but Republicans have largely followed suit, if only for political self-preservation. Every occurrence in the news is presented as accruing to either the plus or minus of an individual politician or party. This is especially true of the liberal mainstream media, who flog Republicans mercilessly (and inaccurately) at every opportunity, while ignoring or rewriting any event that is potentially bad for Democrats. In today’s media environment, the Challenger accident would be painted by CNN as being the Republican’s fault, not as an American tragedy. We can hear it now: “Rather than spending that money on the disadvantaged and minorities, Republicans favored billions of dollars being funneled to one of their favorite supporters, the aerospace industry. In a shallow ploy for good publicity, they cut corners and Christa McAuliffe was killed. This is the Republican playbook.” That’s today’s liberal media in a world where gravitas no longer plays a role.

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Gravitas and leadership skill doesn’t enter the picture in a Democratic reality.

Looking back on past Democrat presidents since World War II (which can legitimately be considered as the modern political and media era), who commanded the respect, showed the gravitas, possessed that elusive quality of duende? Maybe JFK. Handsome, charismatic and inspirational, Kennedy seemed to transcend party lines and was accepted both domestically and around the world as an American president.

LBJ didn’t have those traits and was forced ignominiously from the Presidential race in 1968 by his own incompetence and dishonesty.

Republican Richard Nixon did have a good measure of weight and presence, especially with his outreach to China. The world knew we had a real president, despite the liberal media’s eventual success in undermining his tenure.

Then came Democrat Jimmy Carter, the outsider, the peanut farmer. He became the poster child for ineffectiveness, for political tone deafness, for bumbling weakness. When the raid to rescue the Americans taken hostage by Iran went so horribly wrong in April 1980, it seemed to sum up Carter’s entire presidency. He’d gutted the military to the point where it could no longer function effectively. He’d botched our foreign relations with the Saudis so badly that they felt no compunction whatsoever in imposing the second great oil embargo on the U.S., giving rise to odd-even day gas rationing, long lines and runaway inflation. All Carter could manage in response was to come on TV wearing a cardigan sweater, beg America to turn its thermostat down to 68˚ and announce that we were in a “national malaise.” Not exactly the dictionary definition of gravitas.

Reagan had “it,” that intangible leadership skill. He had the ability to influence foreign affairs, to forge strong bonds with strong allies (like Margaret Thatcher) and to make pointed adversaries (like Brezhnev and Gorbachev) acquiesce to his point of view.