My research took me from Puritan mystics to early Mormons to management gurus to Trump: Charisma rules the world — and it has nothing to do with charm

My research took me from Puritan mystics to early Mormons to management gurus to Trump: Charisma rules the world — and it has nothing to do with charm

The 2020s should have been the decade when American politics began to make sense. The multibillion-dollar industry of public opinion polling can turn vibe shifts into tweetable bar graphs and trend lines. Surveys have found that affiliation with traditional religious institutions has mostly declined over the past generation, so one might conclude that more Americans now form their worldviews and choose leaders based on cool logic and material in…