Hypnotized by Charisma

Former senator Bradley was on Meet The Press pimping his new book, “The New American Story.” Transcript at bottom. Tim Russert asked Bradley about what he meant when he said Democrats are hypnotized by charisma. This was his reply:

MR. RUSSERT: Hypnotized by charisma. What does that mean?

FMR. SEN. BRADLEY: That means that the party has, has tended to look for a knight on a shining—on a white horse to solve all our problems. Republican Party, over 30 years, has invested in structure. At the top of that structure, meaning first you have the—you have the money, the money goes into ideas, think tanks, and then that bubbles up to political operatives, who find the language, that boils up to the media, some elements of the media, they’re repeated over and over. At the top of that is the presidential candidate.

Democrats invert the pyramid. Every Democratic candidate for president has to invent that whole pyramid. And I’m saying that we’re looking for people who have charisma. I think, just take a look at the example of Bill Clinton. Clearly a fine person, great talent, had a lot of charisma. But the reality is, after eight years of Democratic presidency, we had fewer Democratic senators, fewer Democratic congressmen, fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic state legislators and a party in debt. That’s not to criticize President Clinton; it’s simply to say that charisma did not translate into structure. And if you’re going to be there for the long term, you need to build structure. That means structure of local parties, that means structure of ideas, that means structures of service. So that when people think of a party, they can feel that they can do all of those things.

And I guess the main point I’m trying to make here, Tim, is that we can do all these things, that we can control our destiny as, as a country, and that it only takes a few people who are dedicated to making real change to actually make it happen. The people just have to believe that it’s possible. I believe it’s possible. I believe we can have a rebirth of idealism in this country.

Transcript – starts page 7.