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PARTISAN REVIEW
requirements for political aspirants or the "gatekeepers" who bar or
admit candidates, and how stratification occurs among the pool of aspi–
rants. Hypotheses concerning socia l stratification, personality types–
most notably in the work of Harold Lasswell-power stimu li , the
pluralist limits of clites, screening str uctures, opportunity, promotion
va ria bles, sponsorsh ip fu nctions, a nd networks ha ve provided the basic
too ls for research. The purpose of recruitment studies, Camp writes, is
to "expla in those processes that distinguish political c lites both from the
masses and from other elites."
The study of political
elite~
has coincided with the investigation, of
the "charismatic" or "visionary" personality.
In
his
The Theory of
Social and Ecol1omic Organization,
Max Weber was the first to describe
the charismatic aspects of leadership. Today, Warren Bennis is perhaps
our best known investigator of charismatic vision in husiness enterprise.
"eha risma tic leaders," Jane Howell a nd Bruce
J.
Avol io wrote in
1992.,
are celebrated as the heroes of management...as the magic elixir.. .
to
change the course of organizationa l events. Charismatic leaders
achieve these heroic feats by powerfully communicating a com–
pelling vision, relentlessly promoting their beliefs...and expressing
confidence in followers' abilities
to
achieve high standards.
Despite the abundance of studies of clites and charisllla, the concept
of charisma has not been effectively applied to political leaders; and the
investigators of elites have ignored the ultimate question of how politi–
cal persons who have passed through the gate of the pool of aspirants
pass out of the opposite gate into actual elite leadership.
Morris's and Turque's biographies combine elite theory with the con–
cept of charisma, and app ly this fused concept to the understanding of
highly successful political leaders. The ability to pass easily from one fic–
tion
to
another is clearly a core capacity of the successful political leader
in our day. Political charisma flows from the ability to adopt a suitable
fiction, not as a calculation, hut as naturally as a flower turns to the sun
or a chameleon changes color with each environment-a stressless, evo–
lu tionarily adaptive strategy achieved with apparent pleasure; here,
Machiavelli's "seeming" has becollle being, seem-less, and seamless in
action. Ronald Reagan and Albert Gore, among others, possess this fic–
ticity
to
a high degree.
It
is not per'ional duplicity or loyalty
to
a person
or a cause that allows a political leader
to
support school vouchers at one
moment and oppose them the next, or
to
castigate Hollywood violence
