Charm can do wonders for a politician. It can help someone with great privilege and influence seem so appealing, so genuinely like us, even if we'll never actually meet them, that we find ourselves granting them

extraordinary power over our lives. That's a good thing if the likable leader has benevolent

intentions. But we shouldn't forget that charm can also be wielded as a weapon. The charm offensive

is a real, highly calculated and time-tested strategy for shifting global relationships. From KERA in Dallas,

this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. However, they use it for the greater good, for manipulation,

for a little of both. It is clear that politicians understand exactly how important charm is

as a tool for getting things done. So rather than discounting it as something

frivolous, my guest believes it's important to consider all the forms charm can take and to

understand exactly how leaders deploy it in the age of modern media. Julia Sanovend is Associate

Professor of Sociology and Communications at the New School for Social Research.

Her book is called Charm, How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics. Julia, welcome to think.

Thanks so much, Chris. Of course, we want our leaders to be confident and capable of effective

governance that benefits the maximum number of people within a constituency.

But in the modern era, we also want them to seem real and relatable.

Why do those qualities matter to the vast majority of us who will never meet these leaders in person?

Well, that's an excellent question, and it's a little bit absurd, right?

Like, why would we want politicians to be like a next door neighbors or just like us?

Why do we say that politicians should be people we would want to have a beer with?

Politicians have very different lives than we have radically different lives.

In fact, nonetheless, that's the expectation that we present to them.

Be, you know, very authentic, be yourself in radically fake environments such as the media.

Why do we need that? I mean, I think there is a new media environment that we have to consider here,

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