Satan, Charisma, Clinton

Milton’s Paradise Lost would make a terrible video game. The book starts with Satan and his fellow rebel angels hurled out of heaven after losing a battle with god and the loyalist angels.  The battle is described later at tedious length in flashback chapters, and it’s somewhat ridiculous because obviously god and his crew of angels were always a “lock” to win. And Satan and his comrades, being angels, can’t be “killed,” just tossed around and decomposed by omnipotent blows and eventually cast out and down.

Satan gets all the best lines in Paradise Lost. So it’s no wonder that readers like me are led to admire Satan’s “moxie” in his hopeless rebellion against the stifling hierarchy of heaven. Is Satan a “good loser?” I’d have to say, yes he is. Satan’s most famous line is when he rallies his fellow fallen broken angels:

“It is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

As humans, we can relate. Satan’s crew of exiled immortal angels, now immortal demons, answer the call and construct a home for themselves (a “pandemonium” Milton calls it, inventing a word now used to describe raucous sports celebrations.)  And Satan makes another very human (and stoic) observation:

“The mind is its own place, and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

There’s a large part of me that wants to see Satan get back at god. An underdog who rebels against the status quo is attractive to me. So when Satan tricks Adam and Eve into fouling their Paradise and thereby foiling god, I’m pleased that Satan gets a measure of revenge. The battle for the human soul begins: game on!

The fictional progeny of Milton’s 17th century “bad boy” rebel hero are legion. Here are a few of my favorite miscreant outlaws: all the classic mobster movie protagonists, Vic Mackey of the Shield, Hannibal Lector, Tony Soprano, Omar from The Wire, Logan Roy from Succession.

I assume I’m not alone in this guilty pleasure. There is something in our humanity that is attracted to evil. And is the reverse true? We might reflexively say we admire saintly people, but they make for boring fictional characters, and in real life we may resent them for making us feel unworthy. A hero without flaws is a dull, two dimensional person. And we feel some schadenfreude if and when an apparent saint’s veneer of perfection gets stripped away.

The evil fictional characters I mentioned above all share the trait of charisma. When we say someone has charisma, we generally mean it as a compliment. When we’re in the presence of authentic charisma, we are charmed and under a sort of spell. For a time, we subordinate our very existence to the power in our presence. For a time, the world can seem like an enchanted place.  

My one brush with overwhelming charisma was at a small fundraising gathering for then President BiIl Clinton in early 1998. It was held at an apartment in the Dakota (speak of the devil, the location of “Rosemary’s Baby.”) Among the thirty or so attendees were various Hollywood glitterati. It was thrilling to be in close quarters with all those famous people. I tried not to stare. And then Clinton entered. Immediately all the energy of the room shifted to him. He spoke for half an hour without notes, and although I have no remembrance of what he said, I remember being spellbound. His voice and his presence had a certain aspect that made me believe he was talking directly to me.

I think back on that moment, and I’m not sure I could have refused any request Clinton made of me (an unlikely event, because he had no clue who I was.) For hypothetical fun, at the end of his remarks had he approached me and asked me to fly roundtrip to London to buy his favorite jar of jam at Fortnum and Mason, I believe I’d have left that evening.

Charisma accrues to leaders as they advance in their position so that their personal charisma becomes entwined with and magnified by the position they hold. And their ability to entrance the people around them is another accelerant of their charisma.

In 1998, Clinton had been president for five plus years and enjoyed an approval rating well into the 60s. Soon thereafter, the Monica Lewinsky scandal dropped. And it has become a real life lesson for me of how dangerous and destructive the awesome power of charisma can be.

The difference between Milton’s Satan and Bill Clinton is clear to me. Satan is a rebel using his charisma to fight against insuperable odds. Clinton was at the top of the world, for all intents and purposes a god, and used his charisma to destroy a young woman’s life.

I can forgive Satan but not Clinton.